Revit Server & User Hardware Specification

[zohaib.zeekay594575]

Hi Everyone,

I am a Autocad/Revit 2014 User and my office want to Configure Server for Revit and because we now collaborate with all the consultant. Espacially
with all the staff in office. For now we have 20 User and expected grow about 28 -35.
Please Share the Hardware Spec. for Server and User Pc for Complex modeling and Rendring.

Thank you.

[dhurtubise]

Revit Server is use to share a single project, not really design to work with consultants file. If you plan on having the structural files on the RS then link the Arch file you will just slow down the workflow.. unless you are all inhouse. But then if you are inhouse, there's no need for a RS.
Aside that we run all our RS on Virtual Machines. Specs differs from project to project but the most basic one is 2 Core with 8GB Ram

[meng005]

Here is the link to the AutoDesk recommendations: http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-Requirements-for-Autodesk-Revit-2014-Products.html

One thing to consider is how large are the models? If the models are large 300+ mb, and there will be a lot of Revit and AutoCAD links, I recommend that you increase to four or six cores. We found out that creating large files on Revit Server (>500 mb) can fail if you don't have enough CPUs. This occurs towards the end of the process when Revit Server is generating the permissions table (hash table). This process times out, so if it's a really large or complicated model, there may not be enough CPU horsepower to generate the permissions table in time.

[david_peterson]

I like what I've got for a workstation (see spec below). Depending on project size this may be overkill. But for the price tag on what I've got, not sure you can beat it.
As far as revit server, there's a few down falls to worry about. Linked files from consultants. There's no way to automatically update the link if the link isn't actively on your Revit Server. So when you get an updated file from your consultant, you'll need to do some work to get it to work correctly. We've just started a project that our partner will be hosting all the files on their DMZ server and we will be sync'd using our revit server and a WAN accelerator. Should be interesting. But all project files will live there so there shouldn't be a need to do all this manual labor. I just hope it doesn't break. Only time will tell.

[zohaib.zeekay594575]

Thank you for reply david_peterson, meng005, dhurtubise
you given information is very good, so now I dont want collaborate from Consultant.
Lets Plan In House Server and Workstation, we have large Model like Master plan etc..
We want to work on server it means the file we open daily from server and save it there too. Give me Idea Is this process is right or wrong.

[david_peterson]

If everything is all in house there's no real need for Revit Server. If you have multiple offices working on the same project Revit Server may work for you IF the distance isn't all that far. You can't have much Network Latency or it'll crash. We've been using RDP machines for our remote offices. So they remote desktop in to our office to work off the same server as the rest of the team. I'm working currently on a 1.4 million sqft Process Manufacturing project. We have 8 consultants, 60+ models & 5000+ sheets. We've been using an Rsyc option to pass models back and forth between us and our consultants. We've stored everything and allowed our consultants to use our FTP server to pass all the information between all parties. This gets done automatically twice a day. The we then wrote a script to pass those changes between the files on the FTP and the files on our server to update all of our linked models.
For a workstation I'd suggest something with an i7 and as much ram as you can afford. We were using the HPz220 platform before. Great workstation, but could be faster. We've now gone to an i7 platform that we've overclocked to 4.5ghz, a base level gaming graphics card and 32gb of ram with a SSD drive. Works great, but not as stable as the z220, but I'll take it.
Hope this helps.