Revit 2013 upgrade yet? - softaware stability, crashes & bugs

[andrewharle]

We are yet to try out Revit 2013. However I know there are people out there giving it a go.

Last upgrade there was a Thread for logging crashes and bugs. I haven't seen any reports of issues, apart from people struggling to get the required library content to install.

If you have installed it how are you getting on? Is it stable and usable?

Any comments would be appreciated.

thanks

[zanzibarbob7]

I installed mine from the USB drive and it crashes often. We were working on a project in 2012 and I'm glad I retained that version to finish the project and give Autodesk time to correct the stability issues. Each time it crashes I send the report in hopes that it help them figure out the issues. It should be more stable. I also have issues with the complete installation of some of the other programs, like AutoCad Arch and several other of the AutoCad flavors. It doesn't affect me much as I don't use them anyway, just AutoCad from the offending bunch.

Overall, I like the ease of installation from the USB drive, just don't need the bugs.

[Revitaoist]

I've installed it and played with the new features with no problems, but my policy is to not convert existing projects. The next small project I get will be done in 2013, but as a veteran user I handle the new releases like radioactive material: I'll have metaphorical elbow high gloves, facemask, and tongs while I am handling it, ready for it to explode.

[nickedemus]

We upgraded as soon as it came out, and we converted all of our existing projects to 2013. In terms of crashes and idiosyncrasies, it hasn't been any worse than 2012.

[david_peterson]

We upgraded as soon as it came out, and we converted all of our existing projects to 2013. In terms of crashes and idiosyncrasies, it hasn't been any worse than 2012.
Would you care to elaborate? When I upgraded to 2012, I just opened it and had no issues.

[arb]

Out of curiosity, which new features compelled you to upgrade? None of the members of our inter-office design team are too motivated to upgrade at the moment based on the release notes.

- Alex

[nickedemus]

Would you care to elaborate? When I upgraded to 2012, I just opened it and had no issues.

2012 crashed on me a bunch of times. Usually, it saved my work in a recovery file and it wasn't a big deal. Once or twice, I did lose work.

I would say more, but I haven't been especially vigilant. I can say with confidence that I haven't been cursing 2013 for being more troublesome than 2012. I'm not a huge fan of the new materials editor, but that's not really a big deal imho.


Out of curiosity, which new features compelled you to upgrade? None of the members of our inter-office design team are too motivated to upgrade at the moment based on the release notes.

- Alex

It wasn't my decision, and that's probably why I'm not stressed out about it. My boss has the subscription service, so he just did it. All I need to worry about is dealing with it, and it's really not bad. One strange thing it does from time to time is zoom completely out for no apparent reason. Usually when that happens, I'm scrolling with my mouse.

If upgrading was my decision to make, I probably would have waited for a while longer mainly due to the fact that Revit never lets you down-save. That restriction offends my finer sensibilities.

[andrewharle]

Thanks everyone for your comments.

Yes Revit never let you down-save /save back as previous version. This needs to change and we the users need to lobby Autodesk until it does! - saving backwards one release would be fine.

New features worth upgrading are for us better IFC import & export, and ability to link view templates to views (long overdue).

[damon.sidel]

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm looking forward to the new visualization tools: Realistic style shows artificial lights and there is a real-time rendering option. Gradient sky backgrounds in elevations and sections, too, will save me the step of exporting and Photoshopping.

Also, the inclusion of divide and repeat commands in the conceptual modeling tool bring it one step closer to a solution I can use to replace Rhino and Grasshopper where we do quite a bit of conceptual design work.

Finally, the ability to link an .rvt file directly into 3ds Max makes the rendering workflow so much better.

There are tons of improvements that I wish it included, and I'm sure the bugs are annoying now but will be worked out with the service packs. Overall, I could upgrade (not in charge of our subscriptions... and we just upgraded to 2012 about 2 months ago), I would do it.

[zanzibarbob7]

I tried to post the image of the Error I get but I get an error with that too. It says, "A fatal error has occurred. The application will be terminated. You can save, etc." Happened mostly when in the conceptual envir. and when I was fooling around with the new railing feature. May explore later today but have a project in 2012 I need to work on.

[mnixon.258851]

We have recently upgraded from 2012 to 2013. The project I am working on had view templates associated with them during the 2012 session of work. I just noticed last night that none of the views retained the view templates that were associated with each view in 2012.
This information was lost during the upgrade.

[SCShell]

Hey there,
For the first time in over 8 years, I installed the updated version when it became available. (I am presenting at the upcoming RTC and I had a presentation scheduled for our local Revit User Group meeting.)
Luckily, I have no real problems. I also love the new features and have really enjoyed the new graphic/visualization features.
Still crossing my fingers; however, so far....so good.
Steven

[DaveP]

2 One strange thing it does from time to time is zoom completely out for no apparent reason. Usually when that happens, I'm scrolling with my mouse.

There's a new feature that does a Zoom Fit when you double-click the mouse wheel. You're probably accidentally double-clicking while scrolling.

[nickedemus]

There's a new feature that does a Zoom Fit when you double-click the mouse wheel. You're probably accidentally double-clicking while scrolling.

Oh good. I feel less insane now.

[DaveP]

It's interesting that two of the goofiest new features (double-click to ZF, and double-click to Edit Family) are imports from AutoCAD.
Be careful what you ask for!

[kafka]

Hi,

can anyone advise if it is possible to have installed both 2012 and 2013 version on the same machine?

[kafka]

Hi,

can anyone advise if it is possible to have installed both 2012 and 2013 version on the same machine?

[Bobby C. Jones]

Hi,

can anyone advise if it is possible to have installed both 2012 and 2013 version on the same machine?

It is possible.

[david_peterson]

Hi,

can anyone advise if it is possible to have installed both 2012 and 2013 version on the same machine?
I've got RS2011, RS2012, RS2013 and I think RA 2012. No issues here.

[andrewharle]

We are now working with other consultants using Revit, so unless we can coordinate with all consultants to upgrade at the same time we will need to upgrade on a project by project basis (as we did with Revit 2012).

[PeterGehring]

Be wary, multiple crashes, I just spent 30 minutes adding topo points and tried to finish editing, Revit just disappeared, crashed to desktop. No warning, no recovery.

[Batman]

Be wary, multiple crashes, I just spent 30 minutes adding topo points and tried to finish editing, Revit just disappeared, crashed to desktop. No warning, no recovery.

Same issue for us. Whenever finishing a sketch of any kind Revit 2013 is at risk of crashing. Avoid 2013 like the plague until they release the proper verison.

And this double click to edit family..... who was the idiot that asked for that??? Everytime I want to edit a title block field and don't wait long enough between my two mouse clicks it opens the family!!! Totally retarded request!!

[nigeld]

Haven't noticed crashing but then my files are small. As for the "double click to edit family" it remains a useless feature that just slows us down. There should be a tickbox toggle for it in OPTIONS to give us the choice of using it or not. I hope autodesk is listening.

[andrewharle]

As for the "double click to edit family" it remains a useless feature that just slows us down. There should be a tickbox toggle for it in OPTIONS to give us the choice of using it or not. I hope autodesk is listening.
Agreed. There are so many improvements that could be made to the interface, and this definitely was not one of them.

[Batman]

So does anybody know of a 2013 update as yet? This is the most unstable Revit version I have ever used.

[gbrowne]

Yes, this is the most unstable release for me too, and I've been using Revit since V4. If you have a machine that's showing its age and are thinking about upgrading, think again. Anything that was just about good enough for 2012, simply won't work in 2013. And you can't upgrade to a basic spec machine, it has to be gutsy. I guess all the new bells and whistles have heavy requirements.

[Rustle]

I'm at RTC NA 2012 right now and the word is an update is about to be released. These problems should now affect new projects just ones upgraded from 2012. It looks like it could be the changes to the materials.

[momarch]

Hello Andy,

I was just doing a search on Revit 2013 updates and found your post asking if anyone has had problems. I have a year-long project that I kept in 2012 (thankfully) but did do a recent competition in Revit 2013. What I have found is that there is a problem with the "Paint" tool. I had multiple crashes while trying to apply materials (both in perspective view and others.) It was so bad that it was crashing about 50% of the time. I was able to manage, but with difficulty. I submitted a report most of the times, but heard nothing back from Autodesk.

I use Paint a lot for interiors and think that Revit is actually really great for small projects and interiors because I'm not afraid of making families. The client we have now seems to really like getting quick renderings to figure out his preferences. Of course it would be wonderful if more manufacturers got on the Revit bandwagon and offered models!

Revit 2012 was great -- an exceptionally stable product. I used it all year and only recently had a crash for some unknown reason. Hope you find this interesting.

Cheers.

[ArchTech247]

"Same issue for us. Whenever finishing a sketch of any kind Revit 2013 is at risk of crashing"
Ugh, I'm having the same issue, whether I'm sketching a ceiling or a masking region, if it's simple - no crash. If it's a little more than simple - crash without warning! I'm having to sketch a little at a time, finish, save, then edit sketch to add a little more, then repeat.

[gbrowne]

I turned off hardware acceleration (Big R - options - graphics - tickbox) and stability has improved greatly. Still a couple of jitters here and there, but vastly improved stability.

[nickedemus]

I'm having trouble with ceilings duplicating every time lights are added. I posted about it here:

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?139491-Demo-ing-Light-Fixtures-Creates-Duplicate-Ceilings&p=1176278#post1176278

Since that post, it's become a real nuisance in that when I try to do an interior rendering, the ceiling-based lights don't light anything! My suspicion is that the extraneous ceilings are blocking the lights: as if each light cuts through its own ceiling-host and doesn't allow any other lights to cut through. I have to use studio lights.

I didn't experience this issue in Revit 2012. Has anyone else had this problem? Is there a non-studio light work-around?

[nickedemus]

Also, I just downloaded and installed an update for Revit 2013, and now my cloud-rendering capability has gone all askew. Before the update, I set my Render Quality, Image Size, Exposure, etc. once, and it preserved those settings each time I rendered thereafter (at least for the time I was in the file). Now, I need to reset the settings each time I click "Render in Cloud".

Another thing is that the renderings seem to appear at random in the Render Gallery. At first, they showed up at the beginning of the thumbnails, but now they can appear third or fourth in line. It's not terrible, but it is a little annoying to have to hunt for each new rendering.

Also, the Exposure setting seems to have gotten a little wonky: Even if I have it set to "Advanced," it frequently doesn't pick up my interior lights unless I set the lighting to "Interior" in my native render dialog. This happens only about 50% of the time, so I'm having trouble nailing down the cause. It's a bit maddening.

[damon.sidel]

I know this thread is a little out of date, but I keep seeing little bugs here and there for 2013. Did the first service release fix most of the bugs? Is 2013 stable? Is it a very, very, very safe time to upgrade?

[DaveP]

Wow, Damo. You have great timing when reviving an old thread:
http://www.revitforum.org/architecture-general-revit-questions/105-revit-builds-updates-product-support.html#post69261

[david_peterson]

Umm stable isn't the word I would use. But I guess I'd say I've had more crashes with this version than the previous. IMHO it's not one of the better ones. There's still lots of bugs, things that end up missing from sheets, the wysiwyg idea isn't there. It's usually what you see is what you get, but not always. The service pack did address a few issues, butt there's still lots of underlying ones. But I wouldn't expect to see any fix for those until 2014 is out. Just my 2 cents.

[damon.sidel]

Thanks, looks like we'll keep waiting!

[david_peterson]

Your only issue with keeping on waiting, is that you'll have to convert it to 2013 at some point. At this point in time, I don't expect to see another service pack for 2013, but I could be wrong. It's not the worst ever, but I know my co-worker (working on a similar set-up) crashed out 3 times already today.

[damon.sidel]

Your only issue with keeping on waiting, is that you'll have to convert it to 2013 at some point. At this point in time, I don't expect to see another service pack for 2013, but I could be wrong. It's not the worst ever, but I know my co-worker (working on a similar set-up) crashed out 3 times already today.

Worst case scenario: couldn't we just skip it and go straight to 2014?

[david_peterson]

That's an option, but not one I would suggest. When they create new releases and add new features, one of the things they do is convert the content of existing models to work with their new line of programming. If you skip a version, that upgrade may not happen. Best case, no problems, everything works and your model remains 100% intact. Worst case, well..... I leave that up to your imagination. My suggestion would be to wait as long as you and your consultants are willing. Then detach the model and test an upgrade to 2013 and see what happens. If you really want to wait for 2014, fine, but I'd still open and save it in 2013 first. That's the suggested method and the one recommended by adesk.

[damon.sidel]

If you really want to wait for 2014, fine, but I'd still open and save it in 2013 first. That's the suggested method and the one recommended by adesk.

Fair enough! I'll definitely keep that in mind when I recommend to our IT and staff when to upgrade. Thanks.

[MikeJarosz]

Out of curiosity, which new features compelled you to upgrade? None of the members of our inter-office design team are too motivated to upgrade at the moment based on the release notes.

- Alex

We are required by our client, a government agency, to use BIM for all disciplines including MEP. Our MEP consultant informed us that although R2013 may have been an incremental release for architecture, the MEP 2013 release was a major upgrade. That, plus the fact that most of our consultants had already converted, convinced us to move to R2013.

[gbrowne]

I commented earlier on in this thread:

"Yes, this is the most unstable release for me too, and I've been using Revit since V4. If you have a machine that's showing its age and are thinking about upgrading, think again. Anything that was just about good enough for 2012, simply won't work in 2013. And you can't upgrade to a basic spec machine, it has to be gutsy. I guess all the new bells and whistles have heavy requirements."

Turns out, we 'just' had to upgrade out hardware. Now we have done this, Revit 2013 is much more stable.

But I have to say, its all the bells and whistles that's the problem. I heard someone say a long time ago that it takes a software 10 releases to become usable, and another 10 to become unusable. When I first started using Revit, it was a simple sleek programme, and a refreshing thing to use instead of AutoCAD, which was just starting to groan under all the commands, a process that hasn't abated since.

Now Revit is starting to groan. Now it seems there are now multiple ways of doing things, various commands leaking in from CAD that we didn't require before and the complexity is getting worse and worse and as a result the computers we are using have to be very powerful indeed. Before we rush ahead and demand commands to do every little thing, can we just stop and ask 'is this really better?'

<rant over>

[patricks]

We're just now starting to use 2013 here. Normally we make the switch and use the latest version for most projects within a couple of months of initial release. But this one has been different. I'm not sure if it's a combination of us just being busy and not taking the time to do upgrades on our machines, or me not caring that stairs is the only real change in RAC 2013 or what it is. But I've decided that 6+ months and two service packs is long enough. We're now going to use 2013 for all future projects, and I just upgraded a few smaller projects from 2012. Also got our deployment updated to include both service packs.

[JamesBaker]

Anyone have any "gutsy" hardware suggestions? Intel Xeon E5 - Quad Core 3.4Ghz going to work? Nvidia Quadro cards?

[patricks]

Anyone have any "gutsy" hardware suggestions? Intel Xeon E5 - Quad Core 3.4Ghz going to work? Nvidia Quadro cards?

Absolutely not - massive waste of money for running Revit. You'll get much more performance per dollar with current i7 Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge quad-core processors and GeForce GTX 500 and 600-series graphics cards. A 2GB GTX card can be had for under $300. A 2GB Quadro card is going to cost at least $750.

I've been down the Xeon/Quadro road before, it used to be all we had in our office. Now about half our machines are running i7 processors and GeForce GTX or ATI Radeon HD cards, and those half have the best performance of all the machines in our office.

[MikeJarosz]

When I first started using Revit, it was a simple sleek programme, and a refreshing thing to use instead of AutoCAD, which was just starting to groan under all the commands, a process that hasn't abated since.

Let me guess, did the creaking and groaning start just after Autodesk bought Revit out........ ?

[JaredRegister]

That is the exact opposite from what I have heard. I have been using Revit 2013 almost since release, and as an MEP user, the changes have been minimal. We were forced to upgrade by the Architects, with them saying the changers were huge for them...The issue we are having is that 2013 is EXTREMELY SLOW when its a model upgraded from 2012...anyone have any ideas why this might be??

[nickedemus]

It does take a long time to upgrade models. Might have to do with project size. I'm not sure.

--------
In the last two days I've run across a lot of little quirks in 2013.


I cut an edit-in-place void extrusion out of a wall sweep. After I finish the model, I am able select the void profile and open it back up for editing. However, once I'm in edit-mode, the pink lines are nowhere to be found!
I can't get my baluster posts to sit on the same level as my bottom rail. In this particular instance, the baluster post sits 3.5" above the floor. If I adjust the baluster post offset to compensate for the difference, Revit doubles it to 7" below the original position, so that it is now -3.5". Yet, when I attempt to half the offset (1.75") Revit positions the baluster at 1.75". I feel insane.
After editing a few railings, a bunch of blue Railing Extension Lines started appearing in some of my camera views. They were not associated with the railings that I had edited. I could click on them and delete them, but I could not undo the deletes. I ended up having two different top rails on the same family-type. Weird.



Not sure if these issues are unique to Revit 2013, or just some corruption in my file....

[JaredRegister]

Its not really the upgrade process that is causing problems. Once the project has been uploaded, doing any commands, especially panning and zooming in and out, and many others, just take 3-4x's the amount of time...sometimes longer when in more heavily congested areas. I have waited as long as 20 seconds after just panning, for the model to actually do the move and be where I can see it again.

[MikeJarosz]

That is the exact opposite from what I have heard. I have been using Revit 2013 almost since release, and as an MEP user, the changes have been minimal. We were forced to upgrade by the Architects, with them saying the changers were huge for them...The issue we are having is that 2013 is EXTREMELY SLOW when its a model upgraded from 2012...anyone have any ideas why this might be??

Very interesting.

I was told that the MEP 2013 version was far superior to 2012 by none other than the Managing Director of Flack+Kurtz, with his Senior CAD operations manager sitting beside him.

[nickedemus]

Once the project has been uploaded, doing any commands, especially panning and zooming in and out, and many others, just take 3-4x's the amount of time...sometimes longer when in more heavily congested areas. I have waited as long as 20 seconds after just panning, for the model to actually do the move and be where I can see it again.

I haven't run into this at all, except when we were running the software on the cloud.

[nickedemus]

One thing I LIKE about 2013 is the fact that you can undo accidental pan-changes to camera views. If I accidentally rotated a camera view in 2012, I had to sit there and putz around until I got it back to looking the way that it should.

[antman]

Don't forget about the Rewind function on the steering wheel. Might save accidentally undoing something other than view changes.

[nickedemus]

Don't forget about the Rewind function on the steering wheel. Might save accidentally undoing something other than view changes.

Oh wow. I just found that. Nice.

[DaveP]

It would be SO SWEET if you could have a Keyboard Shortcut for Rewind!

[nickedemus]

Huh. Doesn't look like it's possible to set up in keyboard shortcuts. Bummer.

[bmyrum]

I am having this problem with 2013 that it locks up and gives me the spinning wheel when i do a save as command or sometimes try to open our network location for loading families. It also freezes trying to save some PDFs to our network.

[andrewharle]

Sounds like a system or network issue, rather than Revit.

We are using update release 2, and are finding it generally very stable; though it has a graphics glitch sometimes when opening up views, whereby the screen flickers between two images of the view overlaid on top of each other.