Ok 2011 Looked Great, But....

[ben.136902]

Now the performance issues are kicking in. After using for more than about an hour the program becomes terribly slow - even on small models of less than 20MB. This is notorious especially when loading complex families - do we really need to see previews in the add component window? Can this be turned off in future releases so we do not have to wait for the box to load before adding a new family.

3D views seem to maintain their newly refreshed speed even with larger models but when it comes to splitting walls or general construction document tasks such as dimensioning or modifying the model the pain starts. Also what used to take revit 300mb of ram is now taking close to 1gb. This would be fine if the performance difference was that much more incredible. Its not that i am lacking on memory at 8gb of ddr3 but its still makes little or no sense. 64 bit programs take up a larger memory footprint by nature but not over 150% more.

So the video speed has been increased but the documentation and actual work type features start to drag horribly after some use. Good face-lift although under the surface you find a severe case of melanoma.

[cliff collins]

We are seeing this exact performance issue in RAC 2010, only on a few machines. We have not rolled out 2011 office-wide yet.

Seemingly complex/resource-heavy tasks like modeling large buildings and complicated interiors work fine, but simple drafting/annotation routines
start turning slowly into molasses, until you must shut down/restart 3-4 times a day or more. This is happening on only 3 or 4 machines, all Win 7 64 w/ 8GB RAM min.,
quad core CPUs, avg. Nvidias. Memory doesn't really appear to be "leaking"--but
Revit is using as much memory that it can and I suspect it may even begin writing cache
to hard disk when RAM is used up.

It is not project specific, or even task specific. We have even wiped one of the systems
clean down to registry, reinstalled Win 7, added 8GB MORE RAM, reinstalled Revit and the problem persists. Tried turning onn/off Direct 3D--no affect on the performance issue.

Hope it does not worsen with 2011; we are hoping the new version may "fix" the problem,
but it does not look too promising.

cheers

[ben.136902]

Yeah i am not to happy, i was thrilled at first since i thought finally performance was given a close rebuild but editing text in a 50mb project in plan view can take 5 seconds or more before the text is even editable.

I know i know, its my machine, but then when i buy a brand new one or install revit on a different workstation and have the same problem then its windows 7 fault, and then when windows xp is used and the same problem persists it must be the electromagnetic field generated by my monitors and fluorescent lighting fixtures that are causing the issue. Perhaps its time to call the electrician and wrap everything in lead and see if that fixes the problem.

I thought also that closing the properties box would help since its always open now - no difference. Which is somewhat good news since that feature is quite nice - but something is horribly wrong with the program.

I have also started a very small project for a friend that took about the best of a day to design a small cabin for his hunting lodge - I did not import any files from any old projects nor start with an old template - 2011 components from start to finish - basic drawings, 2 sheets and modifying text on these sheets is incredibly slow. I will test on another machine later but could be back to the good ol solid 2009.

[gwnelson]

I wear an aluminum foil hat & haven't had any problems.

[aaronrumple]

...until you must shut down/restart 3-4 times a day or more. This is happening on only 3 or 4 machines, all Win 7 64 w/ 8GB RAM min.,
quad core CPUs, avg. Nvidias. Memory doesn't really appear to be "leaking"--but
Revit is using as much memory that it can and I suspect it may even begin writing cache
to hard disk when RAM is used up.



Naaaa - can't be Cliff. You have 64 bit systems.

(...same problem I posted eons ago. We finally rolled through the "old" hardware and haven't had problems. The old was still quad core single chip 64 bit. New is dual quad 64 bit. Was always a few machines which were identical to others that ran perfectly.)

[cliff collins]

Yeah,

It's only 3 machines--all the others do not have the problem.......
They have nearly identical hdwr specs. and all Win 7 64.

If it's a software issue or "memory leak" in Revit, then you would think ALL
the machines would have the slow down. Or if it's a Win 7 64 bit issue, then
why don't ALL machines have it? LOL.

cheers

[ben.136902]

Aaron are you saying you have identical machines and that some of them run well and some of them dont?

If that is the case i wonder what switching to all buffered ECC Ram and Xeon Chips would do for performance. I know what it would do for the price. Also for motherboards with high capacity multiphase regulators and UPS on every system running revit.

I have seen identical CPU's that are both from the same production sample and do not OC to the same levels which suggests inconsistencies in fabrication but running stock speeds of 3.33ghz with a small job should be cake. At least it is in 2009.

[ron.sanpedro]

Yeah,

It's only 3 machines--all the others do not have the problem.......
They have nearly identical hdwr specs. and all Win 7 64.

If it's a software issue or "memory leak" in Revit, then you would think ALL
the machines would have the slow down. Or if it's a Win 7 64 bit issue, then
why don't ALL machines have it? LOL.

cheers

Here is something to check. Have the users switch machines, and see if the problem follows the user. If the problem is some dreck in the user's registry hive, and you have roaming profiles, it will follow them to a new machine, even a brand new wiped machine. We had a few problems like that when we upgraded to Windows 7 and people's Windows XP roaming profiles where just "upgraded". Deleting the profile and starting from scratch with the default profile cleaned up some issues. Admittedly AutoCAD issues, but still... ;)

Gordon

[cliff collins]

Gordon,

By "switch" you mean log on to another machine with their username, in the same domain?

We'll try that. We did try logging on to the machine itself, avoiding the domain group policy, but the problem persisted. ( we are using win server 2008, with a group policy enabled.)

Good thought........ will report back.

cheers

[aaronrumple]

Here is something to check. Have the users switch machines, and see if the problem follows the user.

Didn't help us. We passed machines over to interiors. The problem went with the machine.

[ron.sanpedro]

Didn't help us. We passed machines over to interiors. The problem went with the machine.

Interesting, and a bit nasty. At moments like these I just close my eyes and dream of Revit for Mac. ;)

Gordon

[nancy.mcclure]

At moments like these I just close my eyes and dream of Revit for Mac. Gordon

ONLY at moments like these? I dream that every day!
My current world is PC by day, Mac by night!

[Steve_Stafford]

Any chance Revit support has seen any of your journals via a support request. The only way there is a prayer of tracking such things down is to give them at least a chance with some data. Anecdotal stuff here doesn't do anything to resolve it except to hopefully lower your own blood pressure for a little while, not a bad thing though.

One other thing not mentioned here yet, virus protection software? Other software differences between pc's. They might have the same spec's but one's got a performance stealing widget like Weatherbug?

[r.grandmaison]

Though they are identical boxes, it might be due to a peripheral device or drivers installed for such. You might fire up MSCONFIG and disable all but essential Windows services to see if there's something else running on the machine that's causing the slowdown on "identical" stations.

[jeffh]

Though they are identical boxes, it might be due to a peripheral device or drivers installed for such. You might fire up MSCONFIG and disable all but essential Windows services to see if there's something else running on the machine that's causing the slowdown on "identical" stations.

This is true. I have seen instances where a printer driver has prevented Revit from starting altogether. That kind of thing can be found in the journal files sometimes if support has access to them.

[aaronrumple]

Any chance Revit support has seen any of your journals via a support request. The only way there is a prayer of tracking such things down is to give them at least a chance with some data.

We gave them TONS of stuff. Journals, files, etc. Never got any real resolution. Last I heard it was forwarded "to development".

Our current resolution is that the new non-Revit guys in the office gets stuck with these systems until they get replaced. My current home brew dual i7, 12 gig Nvidia Quadro based system works fine. Runs Revit/Photoshop/3DS Max all at the same time without problems.

[cliff collins]

Out of 20 machines or so, only (3) have this performance problem, and it is only happening in Revit 2010 64 bit on Win 7 64, on very simple drafting tasks.

The strange thing is this:

(2) of the machines are old Dell 390s which were "upgraded" to Windows 7 64,
Quad core Q6600s, 8 GB of "old style" RAM, and low-end graphics cards.
OS was not "upgraded"--old 32 bit Win XP was removed, and Win 7 64 installed.
We would expect these machines may have a bit of a performance problem.
If it was just these two machines, we'd suspect them and replace with newer ones.

However, the 3rd machine is a very new HP Z600, Xeon Quad core, 12 GB latest hi-quality RAM, and a decent Nvidia Quadro card--this is the one which we would expect would NOT be experiencing the performance problem. So--we wiped it clean, reinstalled Win 7 64, reinstalled Revit 2010 64, and the problem persists. Tried switching on/off Direct 3D HA--no affect; problem persists.

There are other "rebuilt" Dell 390s with same spec as the (2) above, and other HP Z600s
which DO NOT experience the performance issue.

As stated before, it is not "project specific"--as it occurs on several different projects.
So we have not sent Adesk the .rvt files ( which include several links, at about 450 MB total on one of the jobs.)

The problem is very slow performance when using 2D Detail Components, annotations/dimensions, etc. which would seemingly be very "light tasks" on resources.
We can model, create new families, walls, etc. with no slowdown on all 3 machines--
it's only the 2D simple tasks which cause the slow down.

We have not upgraded any of these projects to RAC 2011 yet. Yet to see what happens
with 2011. LOL

cheers

[ejc]

blame facebook. you can't go wrong

ejc

[Duffy]

We have found on the 32bit machines that 2011 is slower and more unreliable than 2010 (I didn't think it was possible) crashing about 4 - 5 times a day.

However I loaded it on a brand new i7 930, 12gb RAM. Radion 1gb 5850 and Windows 7 64bit and it has run like a dream. 4 days straight without a crash or slowdown, the shadows worked as they should have for years and even printed within reasonable times. I haven't had to turn the graphics acceleration off for the first time in 3 years. The rendering works a treat and I can finally render large images without breaking them into pieces.

The one massive disappointment is watching the 7 out of 8 cores of my new processor still lying dormant while the other one chews its head off during simple functions.

[Andrew Dobson]

Yeah,

It's only 3 machines--all the others do not have the problem.......
They have nearly identical hdwr specs. and all Win 7 64.

If it's a software issue or "memory leak" in Revit, then you would think ALL
the machines would have the slow down. Or if it's a Win 7 64 bit issue, then
why don't ALL machines have it? LOL.

cheers

Try swapping the RAM out in the problem machines (or swap it over with the working machines).

Does this solve the problem?

[cliff collins]

Andrew,

We swapped the ram, changed hard drives, changed ethernet and graphics cards,
added 8GB MORE ram, reinstalled Win 7 64, reinstalled Revit---no luck.

We expected that such problems could happen with the rebuilt Dells, but NOT on a brand new HP Z600. Still troubleshooting.....

cheers

[Brian Myers]

We expected that such problems could happen with the rebuilt Dells, but NOT on a brand new HP Z600. Still troubleshooting.....


Is this the only Z600 you are using? Sounds like you've replaced everything except the processor and the motherboard. (Just narrowing down the components that are unique to this system).

[cliff collins]

No, we have other HPZ600s which DO NOT experience the slowdown in Revit.

We have not replaced the CPU or motherboard--pretty major surgery........

cheers

[twiceroadsfool]

Cliff-

How were the machines loaded with all of their wares? Were they done with an identical Image, or did someone actually load the different applications and configurations on one by one? Have you tried the different machines at the same network port?

[aaronrumple]

...same thing we had going on. Just order new machines until you have ones that work.

[cliff collins]

...same thing we had going on. Just order new machines until you have ones that work.

Aaron M,
I checked with our IT mangr. who did the installs.
The Dell rebuilds OS were installed from DVD media.
The HPZ600 OS was installed via an image. Go figure.

Aaron R,
You are joking, right? But that brought up a good idea.
We are going to send the HPZ600 back and get a brand new one and test it.

cheers

[aaronrumple]

Aaron R,
You are joking, right? But that brought up a good idea.
We are going to send the HPZ600 back and get a brand new one and test it.

cheers

Nope. It's what we had to do. I can still point to systems in our office that if you install Revit - it will crash. We're just fortunate we were able to shuffle those systems to non-Revit staff. And the systems - like your's - were identical to others that ran with no crashing.

We never got resolution on the issue from Autodesk.

[twiceroadsfool]

Aaron M,
I checked with our IT mangr. who did the installs.
The Dell rebuilds OS were installed from DVD media.
The HPZ600 OS was installed via an image. Go figure.


The other z600's that work fine.... EXACT same image, or did anything else (however trivial) change?

[cliff collins]

Turns out the (3) other HP Z600s OS was UPGRADED from Vista 64 to Win 7 64--
and they do not have the slow-down problem...........

the saga continues.....

cheers

[twiceroadsfool]

Interesting. Ive got a few win7-64 machines here that were done with images, that perform flawlessly. We did them that way at the old office too.

I have to wonder what minor setting is getting ticked...

[Brian Myers]

Seems easy then... just don't install using the (likely) corrupt image. I know, pointing out the obvious. :roll:

[cliff collins]

Update:

We have looked into the local user profile in the registry as a potential cause.

We are testing this by logging on to one of the problematic machines as a different user,
either with or without administrative rights.

So far, this has seemed to fix the problem--but we are going to test this heavily on a large
project with lots of linked models, and see if we can cause the slowdown problem to reappear.

Will keep you posted.........

cheers

[dzatto]

Update:

We have looked into the local user profile in the registry as a potential cause.

We are testing this by logging on to one of the problematic machines as a different user,
either with or without administrative rights.

So far, this has seemed to fix the problem--but we are going to test this heavily on a large
project with lots of linked models, and see if we can cause the slowdown problem to reappear.

Will keep you posted.........

cheers
I only know enough about computers to screw one up, but I've experienced a huge slow down using 2011. At least it seems that way. I only used 2010 for a month before going to 2011 and that's all the Revit experience I have. I'm the only user on my laptop. How would I test my profile? It's lagging really bad. I've crashed it twice recently.

here's my setup:

Dell M6500 Covet
8G DDR3 1033 memory
NVidia Quadro FX 3800M 1G video card
350GB 7200 RPM hard drive
Intel i7 820 1.73 Ghz quad core processor

I should have more than enough power to run Revit. It should fly, and it does for about an hour. Then it lags bad. Any ideas?

[cliff collins]

Try logging on as a new/different user.

Your specs look good--except the processor is a bit slow, compared to normal workstations which are in 2-3 Ghz speed range.

I've now seen posts where 2011 is actually faster on the same machine, same project,

and now yours where you are much slower............ are you working on an upgraded 2010
project? No worksets/central file?

cheers

[twiceroadsfool]

Update:

We have looked into the local user profile in the registry as a potential cause.

We are testing this by logging on to one of the problematic machines as a different user,
either with or without administrative rights.

So far, this has seemed to fix the problem--but we are going to test this heavily on a large
project with lots of linked models, and see if we can cause the slowdown problem to reappear.

Will keep you posted.........

cheers

It hasnt happened to us with Win7, but this was an issue at my old office on Vista64, for some reason. We had to wipe and out recreate users Profiles, because of the same thing: You would click file open, and it would hang for twenty seconds.

Eradicated the profiles entirely, and it was golden. really weird.

[dzatto]

Try logging on as a new/different user.

Your specs look good--except the processor is a bit slow, compared to normal workstations which are in 2-3 Ghz speed range.

I've now seen posts where 2011 is actually faster on the same machine, same project,

and now yours where you are much slower............ are you working on an upgraded 2010
project? No worksets/central file?

cheers
Yep, it was started in 2010. Maybe that's the problem. No worksets. No central file.

As for the processor, the way it was explained to me is that it's the new i7 quad core. So, although it says it's only 1.73 ghz, it's actually faster than a core 2 duo 3 Ghz or higher. I was told that you can't compare the two processors by speed since the i7 is a new way of processing. Does that make sense?

[Jun Austria]

I only know enough about computers to screw one up, but I've experienced a huge slow down using 2011. At least it seems that way. I only used 2010 for a month before going to 2011 and that's all the Revit experience I have. I'm the only user on my laptop. How would I test my profile? It's lagging really bad. I've crashed it twice recently.

here's my setup:

Dell M6500 Covet
8G DDR3 1033 memory
NVidia Quadro FX 3800M 1G video card
350GB 7200 RPM hard drive
Intel i7 820 1.73 Ghz quad core processor

I should have more than enough power to run Revit. It should fly, and it does for about an hour. Then it lags bad. Any ideas?

dzatto, we have (almost, mine is non-covet) the same laptop. Except I change my OS hard drive to SSD. And with a separate 160GB HD for projects.
I'm also working on a project that was started on 2010. Except its in a worksharing environment. 110 megabytes and still counting. And yet no slow down in the performance.

Is your hardrive partitioned?

[dzatto]

dzatto, we have (almost, mine is non-covet) the same laptop. Except I change my OS hard drive to SSD. And with a separate 160GB HD for projects.
I'm also working on a project that was started on 2010. Except its in a worksharing environment. 110 megabytes and still counting. And yet no slow down in the performance.

Is your hardrive partitioned?
Ummmm, I don't know. LOL

I'm sure it's got a partition for recovery, but I haven't added any. Why? Would that affect performance somehow?

I almost got a second SSD, but opted not to. How's the heat factor on your machine? I sometimes sit on the couch and work, and boy does it get hot!

[dzatto]

I was working with the 3D view in realistic mode and the floor plan open (tiled windows) at the same time. Everytime I would edit a roof, it would have to reload and regenerate it. Once I changed from realistic to shaded with edges, ti sped up considerably. I guess that was the problem.