Splitting a large revit model

[f.richarz503713]

We are working on a large project and the file size is getting unmanageable. I am considering splitting the model to make it more manageable, but am concerned about problems that may arise in doing so.

The details:

Project is currently on Revit Server 2015
Currently 5-9 persons working on the file at any given time.
Current file size 600Mb plus and growing
MEP Revit model is linking into this model
Currently in CD phase of project.

I have already purged the file of un-necessary families.
Un-used views have been deleted.
No CAD files are linked or included.

Not sure the best way to split this thing up. Would it be best to create work sets, or to split the shell into a separate file and link that into he main file? I am looking for any help you can offer

Thanks

[Steve_Stafford]

You must be using worksets already if 5-9 people are working on the file? If so then using worksets well can improve day to day performance for individual users if the geography of the project or the work and responsibility of the people on the project lends itself to being assigned to different worksets. Then users can close worksets that are not related to their tasks hour by hour or half hour by half hour. The project will also open much faster if they can open only the worksets that are relevant to what they are going to focus on first. For example, if there are East and West wings and I need to work on the East wing there is no advantage to have the West wing's model elements being displayed. I'd close the West workset(s) and Revit will only spend time showing me the worksets that are open.

If you've already done that and at 600 MB your project remains sluggish then look for physical separation of the building, like the exterior shell. That's a common concept to separate models. The shell can be linked to the core model and if it's Room Bounding parameter is checked it will provide bounding for the core models rooms. The goal should be to keep as many dependent elements together in the same model, like rooms and interior walls. When the things that depend on other elements for scheduling are not, like Furniture in the same model with rooms, then it becomes quite ineffective, even if the model is now faster we've become less productive because data is not integrated.

Apart from shell and core then consider geographical organization like wings for North, South, East and West or Retail floors versus residential floors (don't know what kind of project you're doing). Then consider how the program lends itself to specific experts on the team, like a hospital's rooms versus laboratory spaces.

The goal is to ensure that as much stuff that depends on each other is together and that the people that need to spend large quantities of time with them get to do so in a reasonable way. It can be challenging.

I wrote a blog post on the subject of Workset separation (http://revitoped.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-many-worksets-do-i-need.html) if you're interested, and many others (http://revitoped.blogspot.com/2012/04/workset-posts-summary.html). The separation via worksets it discuss is also valid when considering separate models.

Good luck!

[rbcameron1]

Steve's advice is solid. He gives a good list of workset names too. It shouldn't take too much to follow the advice and split it up accordingly. You probably have a Shared Levels and Grids in there already, along with maybe an architectural. One reminder, please do not rename worksets that are pre-existing.

[david_peterson]

We tend not only to split out the Shell of a building but also things like Furniture and Medical Equipment.
I've found that Furniture is usually over modeled and to complex for what you really need most of the time.
Things like Hospital beds are just complex by nature so they are large.
Doors are the other one that comes to mind. To many families and no enough types.
One thing I've done in the past was to export all the families in your model. Then take a look at the files size of said families. You might find that there's a bunch of junk nested in another family or some families that are just simply bloated. Not always a sure fire way.
Out of curiosity how many sq ft of a building are we talking?
Are their Cad details or detail components nested in your families that may not need to be there?
Just some thoughts.

[jagostinho]

We tend to split project into multiple sizes and try to keep each file under 200Mb.
As for worksets we model everything in Workset 1, except for dedicated worksets for each linked model, linked CADs and structural elements we need to create so that we are able to produce slab edge drawings. These elements are kept under monitoring with the structural model just in case something changes.

While splitting the models, we tried using an annotations file, meaning a file just with linked building files and where we would place all of our sheets and annotations. In larger files this proved to be problematic as we would get lots of annotations and dimensions snapping.

We now tend to group drawing packages in each model file to keep things under control.

This has been addressed in previous posts, such as this one.
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?151094-Revit-STC-issue-Tags-of-linked-elements-losing-host

[fsnoeck697808]

hi,

from my experience splitting is the best but not the easiest. You have to consider while producing shopdrawings that the annotations are creating crosslinks between the revit files. So, the more you split, the more crosslinks you will have. A balance needs to be found.

Appart from removing the CAD files and creating new central files on a regular basis. Here some points you can work on:

1. Remove all worksets and create them again (you can use a parameter to make them again afterwards). This will remove the users (might happen that several users are saved for one person (fe: TOM_J; tom_J; tomJ; etc..)
2. If you can, remove the links, this will delete the annotations on linked files (if not needed).
3. remove all 3D lines
4. Simplify families having curves / sherical shapes.

I am a bit late, your problem might be solved already..

best of luck,
F