Any way to purge memory usage w/o restarting?

[jameswest77]

We've been working on a medium-sized residential project these last few days, about 240mb, with a few dozen families. After loading and w/o performing any actions in Revit, I see Revit is consuming about 3GB of RAM. After an hour or so that number will climb up to about 5.5GB. Even if I close the file, the amount of RAM used doesn't go back down and every additional family I open adds to the RAM consumed. Its as though Revit isn't purging its cache of memory, unless I physically restart Revit.

Any ideas? I'm pretty sure Adobe products have a menu item for purging memory, or something like it.

Thanks,
James

[jsnyder.68308]

After you close Revit, go look in the windows task manager on the Processes tab and sort it by the memory column (descending). What's using all the memory?

[jameswest77]

perhaps I wasn't clear. When I close revit, the RAM usage falls back to normal, according to the task manager. I'm looking for a solution to resetting the RAM w/o restarting Revit.

[DoTheBIM]

Not to discount potential for better memory handling... but curious why you just can't close Revit? I have another program that does this as well as Revit, and I can get it to climb to over 6GB (on 8GB or RAM) at which point things slow way down.

[jameswest77]

Not to discount potential for better memory handling... but curious why you just can't close Revit? I have another program that does this as well as Revit, and I can get it to climb to over 6GB (on 8GB or RAM) at which point things slow way down.

Well, for one its a HUGE hassle to close all the families and projects, close Revit, reopen Revit, and reopen all the files again just to get Revit to clear it's RAM cache, which it should be able to do on its own. Is there not any options for memory management in Revit?

[RobG]

the question has to be asked, why are you keeping the families open all the time? once it's loaded, it doesn't need to have the file still open...

also, keep the number of views/windows open to a minimum. Using the "close hidden windows" is a great way to keep things going smooth(er)

[jameswest77]

the question has to be asked, why are you keeping the families open all the time? once it's loaded, it doesn't need to have the file still open...

also, keep the number of views/windows open to a minimum. Using the "close hidden windows" is a great way to keep things going smooth(er)

yes, I check 'close hidden windows" all the time. it is great.

why do I have lots of families open at once? do I even need a reason? maybe because I'm making similar changes to all of them at the same time, or maybe just because I'm lazy. Sure, I might be able to improve my own practices, but that's not what I'm asking.

Like my original post asked, Is there a way to tell Revit to clear it's memory cache? Even when I do close families and files, like I originally stated, the amount of RAM Revit is using, according to my task manager, does not change. Even if I close every open document in Revit, it still is using the same amount of RAM as when I had everything open.

Are there no options for memory management, like in AutoCAD?

[RobG]

wow. did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

seems the answer off hand is no. As most people do, we take the few moments it takes to close down revit if we find it really bogs things down that drastically. The other options: add more ram, add more ram, add more ram...

Sorry it might not be the answer your seeking, and sorry the suggestions don't seem satisfactory at times....

[cdatechguy]

I have 12gb of ram and I still have to reboot time to time....especially if I open a couple of models that max out my virtual memory....(26.86GB of Revit Virtual memory btw....)

[jameswest77]

Wrong side of the bed? Nope, feeling great today. I didn't mean to sound abrasive, I just wanted to save time and cut through all the typical AUGI forum "why would you want to do that" BS and try and get to the answer more efficiently.

I didn't think there was an answer to the problem, I was just hoping there was. Thanks. :)

and yeah, 8 and 12GB here, too. Hate it how Autodesk seems to be telling us that more RAM is the answer, which puts the responsibility on us, instead of making their software more memory efficient. I mean, not clearing the cache when files are closed is kind of ridiculous, isn't it?

[sbrown]

Revit uses "lazy parsing" it only loads what it needs to load. So make sure you are using worksets and close worksets you aren't using, this will reduce the RAM being used without closing and reopening revit. If you open everything as you are doing, you will always use the same amount of ram(more than you want to). So make sure you set up your project in a logical way so you can use "selective open" to only open what you need to at any given time.

[jameswest77]

Revit uses "lazy parsing" it only loads what it needs to load. So make sure you are using worksets and close worksets you aren't using, this will reduce the RAM being used without closing and reopening revit. If you open everything as you are doing, you will always use the same amount of ram(more than you want to). So make sure you set up your project in a logical way so you can use "selective open" to only open what you need to at any given time.

so, is there an advantage to "lazy parsing," or can I feel comfortable continuing to gripe about Revit's supremely terrible memory management?

[jsnyder.68308]

I have found that closing all the hidden views, then simply minimizing the Revit window will put me back into the green again - at least according to the system performance part of the the worksharing monitor. I have not actually checked the task manager to see if it really does anything, but I have seen that Revit Virtual Memory scale go down by about 30% on occasion. Even if it does nothing to actually help, it makes me feel better. Your mileage may vary.

[sbrown]

Gripe all you want, the factory is always trying to improve the performance of Revit. However, I personally think revit manages memory extremely well. Try opening 200+ Sheets of CAD fileswith xref's in one session of autocad/ADT. I have projects in revit where I can access that many sheets of data from one file with out any problems. So I think revit is doing pretty good. But you really do need to take advantage of the worksharing tools they provide to be most efficient.

[narlee]

Related info:

http://revitclinic.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/04/removing-the-unused-purge-unused-in-revit-2012.html

[MAHMOUDS12624844]

Use RAMMap from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/rammap.aspx
select revit.exe from processes tab -> then Empty -> Empty working sets

revit.exe was consuming about 1.3GB ram... after doing this it was reduced to about 200mb ony

you can also create a .bat file to automate this task... check https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/614306/get-rid-of-standbyavailable-ram/