Why is this project unstable and slow?

[Duncan Lithgow]

I've got a pretty simple preliminary design project for a moderately sized hospital building (not a campus style complex). At the moment I've got about 180,000m² spread over two files. One of the existing building mass and one with all the new. In the new building I'm seeing a lot of problems with long sync times, long waits for borrowing permissions and generally a clunky model. It's only 80MB (57 MB after an audit and compaction) but there are typically 8 - 10 people in the model at any one time. People are working on placing rooms and interior walls - nothing too tricky. There are no serious warnings in the model, just duplicate room and similar things. (okay, okay, I admit, a few overlapping wall I haven't had fixed yet, I'll get to it soon okay...)

Today the model crashed giving a very informative 'Software problem' error dialogue before exiting. Went through my backups, found one that worked, all okay now ...

So I'm wondering are there just too many people in the model?

How much will these things help:

1. Preselecting an area and borrowing permission for elements before starting to work in that area?
2. Synchronizing less often (how often?)
3. Extending the Worksharing update frequency a little or even completely?
4. Having users agree on which area of the building they each will work in, so they don't 'run' into each other so often?

... because this is not a big file and not a complex geometry (yet) I'd really like to avoid splitting the model up just yet. Also because no-one knows how the project will be put to tender and there are few obvious division lines in the building geometry.

All opinions, and especially links to informative reading, gladly accepted.

[Steve_Stafford]

You don't mention a number of things:

Version of Revit and web update status - all using same build
PC's compatibility and quality - all equally capable, one lousy pc can slow the rest down (when many users are involved)
Network configuration - same office, server allocation (competing with other services), switches and routers and other network optimization

Revit crashiness is usually PC issues (RAM/Video Card/Driver) or network connectivity (poor connections or technical issues like server based backup operation interfering for example).

1. Yes, it reduces the number of requests for permission.
2. I would increase synchronization (less data transfer when done more often, less work passing through the "pipe" in each direction)
3. If you mean making it less frequent, I have heard that set to most frequent has caused some instability but I'm not sure it isn't network/PC related versus purely a Revit thing.
4. More communication is always better

[Duncan Lithgow]

Hi Steve, thanks for taking time to reply.

Version of Revit and web update status
I've set in motion getting us all on the same build of Revit. I've been wrestling with this for months. We had all four builds running - bad Duncan, bad.

PC's compatibility and quality
I've never quite understood why this is so important, and find it hard to compare machines. Should I do a round with the RFOBenchmark tool? Is it just the processing time each PC needs to synchronize and borrow elements?

Network configuration
This may well be part of the problem. But it's a bit out of my expertise. We are in two cities in Denmark with the Central file hosted on a hosting service. No Revit Server or special setup. Management is considering using Citrix later in the project.

Synchronizing less often and Worksharing update frequency: I've got everyone to change their reminders to once an hour and update frequency to 30 seconds. This seems to have helped a bit today, we'll see how it goes. There's still a long way to go in this phase of the project so I'll need to do something more at some point.

[cdatechguy]

You're hosting on a cloud server? Try a speedtest to where your server is located to see what your download/upload times are from each location. Then take account for all the central syncs and the updates that Revit does automatically.

[Duncan Lithgow]

Hi Michael. I will look into how to collect those numbers.

Where can I read about the updates that Revit does automatically?

Yes, this is a questionable way to run a Revit project. But I need to do the numbers to prove it to management.

[Steve_Stafford]

...Version of Revit and web update status...We had all four builds running - bad Duncan, bad...

This alone can cause crashiness, especially if none of them are using the same build. Imagine you have a cold, go to work, pass the cold to a co-worker. You get better but then catch the cold from the co-worker that caught it from the person you gave it to. A new build may resolve something that is wrong with the code and affecting your project. The new build fixes it but then the older build reintroduces the same issue again. The newer builds fix...older builds reintroduce... cycle repeats until corruption occurs.

You don't HAVE to have the same build installed on every computer but you REALLY WANT the same build on all the computers that will work on the SAME file(s).


...PC's compatibility and quality ...I've never quite understood why this is so important, and find it hard to compare machines.
I can't prove it does matter, not writing about it here at least. Autodesk claims it matters in their Best Practices document. I accept the claim in a general way. If I have a 8 year old laptop with too little RAM running Windows NT and the rest are roughly the same computer then it is easier to blame the old computer. I've also been told that using the same operating system is important, as in all Windows 7 or all 8.1. This has more to do with how the operating systems are connecting to the network and saving data reliably, the same way. Seems pretty subtle but if you are experiencing crashing or corruption it needs to be factored in, ruled out.


...Network configuration...This may well be part of the problem. But it's a bit out of my expertise. We are in two cities in Denmark with the Central file hosted on a hosting service. No Revit Server or special setup. Management is considering using Citrix later in the project.This may well be the cause too. The tricky part of hosting Revit files remotely and accessing them is that latency can affect Revit's ability to deal with permissions fast enough to prevent users from borrowing the same elements. Revit Server is designed specifically to deal with permissions in a way that Revit understands. WAFS services probably don't know anything about how Revit works, just worried about passing bits back and forth fast.


...Synchronizing less often and Worksharing update frequency: I've got everyone to change their reminders to once an hour and update frequency to 30 seconds. This seems to have helped a bit today, we'll see how it goes. There's still a long way to go in this phase of the project so I'll need to do something more at some point...Sounds like you've seen some improvement. Perhaps the other issues are not significant enough. My guess... the other issues are a problem but you won't know for sure until you have another incident or can do more testing.

[Duncan Lithgow]

Thanks Steve. I'm aiming at the web updates and OS versions for now. Those I have some control over. Some others are looking at the network problems - which are suddenly much bigger after our Copenhagen crew moved to a project office.

What I find frustrating is that Revit will be crunching away, clearly busy with something, but the network and CPU usage stays very low. Our IT guy was pretty puzzled that he couldn't see a Revit process which was pushing the machines limit.

[Steve_Stafford]

Is iTunes installed on any of these computers? A friend at a client's office told me that they discovered that iTunes was slowing down file access, particularly for opening files, because it shares the same port(s) with Revit for file sharing. They removed iTunes and things improved, went back to normal.

[MikeJarosz]

Is iTunes installed on any of these computers?

This is a joke, right?

Or could it be Apple's revenge on Microsoft?

[Duncan Lithgow]

No joke http://revitoped.blogspot.dk/2014/04/revit-and-itunes-are-not-friends.html

[Rick Moore]

FWIW, I've been running Revit and iTunes all day for years with no problems