Difference in performance

[anders.hedman]

I´m working on 2 projects, one of some 40 MB in size and the other 24 MB. The bigger project runs much more fluently than the smaller which causes a great delay in performance. Will be grateful for suggestions what to change in the slower one.

[eldad]

this is weird, but I would run an Audit on the slow file as well as purge all unused and see if it is going to make a difference...

[anders.hedman]

Thanks , I will try that.
In fact the slowness appears specially on certain floors, were I occasionally have used detail groups. I will turn the items in them into families
The slower project is "older" so it has been upgraded at least from Revit 6.1.

[kpaxton]

Thanks , I will try that. In fact the slowness appears specially on certain floors, were I occasionally have used detail groups. I will turn the items in them into families The slower project is "older" so it has been upgraded at least from Revit 6.1.
Well, You've just hit on the two main factors that I've seen affecting performance:

Groups
Upgrading a file from an earlier version
I think you're along the right path with creating families in lieu of the groups. Until this feature is upgraded, I am staying away as much as possible. I'm not sure how to get around the file upgrade issue (from one version to the next), but I think the Audit feature was enabled to assist in avoiding these problems.

Good Luck.
Kyle

[DaveP]

Check for "excessive" use of in-place families, too. That was one of the things that killed us on our first (6.1) project. Also, we had imported & exploded a lot of AutoCAD details. In 6.1 the hatching exploded down to a W-H-O-L-E bunch of little lines.

[anders.hedman]

Thanks again for your replies!

Its a pity if the groups affects performance negatively. (In Autocad blocks did the opposite) My whole "slow"project is based on quotations. Bathrooms , kitchens, balconies etc. and even floors are mostly similar. Is there perhaps a difference which kind of groups are "worst"; detail-groups, grouped walls, groups including families etc.

Which is then the best way to create multi-similar-story buildings? Making a family of the standard floor? I am of course aiming at for example only having to do a change once in one single bathroom, not about 40 times in each occasion.

[eldad]

using groups is essential when you are doing a high rise. I would only group similar elements, like walls, external internal. Avoid grouping the whole floor and everything in it, Revit came a long way with groups, still more work to do though.
As well nested array families in large quantities will slow you down...

[Merlin]

I've just come across a similar query from a friend. He, too, has some problems where his computer is "chugging" under the load. In his case, he's trying to repeat the same building several times across his site; he's finding it's taking H-U-G-E timespans to regen etc.

Without seeing it, and having some info passed on, I advised him to try importing the building several times into a separate file, and also apparently he has several Filled Regions for floor finishes (I advised him to ditch those and model the floor finishes as 3D elements).....any other ideas?

John Mc

[Martin P]

yI have wondered if Revit should be going down the path of using linked files far more often - what I mean is that a large linked file always seems to work very well - unfortunately any edits to the linked models will mean closing down the file you are working in though.

If I were working on a large multi storey model (which I never have) - I would be very keen to break it into reasonable chunks to work with - external walls, internal walls, stairs/lifts, steel, site, etc - all as separate files that linked into each other ..... - It would help that you could instantly hide for example all the external walls and just see the interior - or if you could remove all the insides for a "shell" to do your renderings etc... but most importantly you could not load in the parts of the model you werent working on at the time and free up loads of memory - to speed up working on the areas you want to. Basically xrefs in 3D - I always found xrefs to be extremely useful for breaking up large projects and letting you focus on the area you are interested in - I would apply the exact same logic to Revit models.

I am sure there are hidden problems with doing this, but I would still give this a try myself. I would expect the benefits to outweigh the losses in doing this. (dimensions that update are just one loss I can think of with a linked file) -

But it would always be possible to produce documentation in these separate files too...There is no law that says you have to produce all documents in one file - again there would be a gain in splitting it all up into more than one file.... For example if room tags wont behave in a linked file - just do the documentation in the file that has internal walls, if you have to draw some separation lines at the outside to represent the external walls so what? (the model for the external walls will be linked in, but ignored by room tags - so draw some room separation lines!!)


On smaller projects the time in opening and closing the linked files will make it not worth trying this I would imagine.

[Phil Palmer]

I have wondered if Revit should be going down the path of using linked files far more often - what I mean is that a large linked file always seems to work very well - unfortunately any edits to the linked models will mean closing down the file you are working in though.

If I were working on a large multi storey model (which I never have) - I would be very keen to break it into reasonable chunks to work with - external walls, internal walls, stairs/lifts, steel, site, etc - all as separate files that linked into each other in one place - where I would the do detailing, overlays, notes etc etc..... - It would help that you could instantly hide for example all the external walls and just see the interior - or if you could remove all the insides for a "shell" to do your renderings etc... but most importantly you could not load in the parts of the model you werent working on at the time and free up loads of memory - to speed up working on the areas you want to. Basically xrefs in 3D - I always found xrefs to be extremely useful for breaking up large projects and letting you focus on the area you are interested in - I would apply the exact same logic to Revit models.

I am sure there are hidden problems with doing this, but I would still give this a try myself.
Martin,

The issue with your theory will be the loss of functionality with room tags etc.
Revit would not be able to identify the room boundaries accross linked files (yet!)
This would mean that all external and internal walls would need to live in the main file that you annotate from as annotation is also not shred accross linked files.

I think it really depends upon the building type you are creating as to how effective your idea would be.

I have always gone the route of worksets and selective opening a project to reduce the memory and performance issues and yet maintain the 1 model file.

[Martin P]

Martin,

The issue with your theory will be the loss of functionality with room tags etc.
Revit would not be able to identify the room boundaries accross linked files (yet!)
This would mean that all external and internal walls would need to live in the main file that you annotate from as annotation is also not shred accross linked files.

I think it really depends upon the building type you are creating as to how effective your idea would be.

I have always gone the route of worksets and selective opening a project to reduce the memory and performance issues and yet maintain the 1 model file.

LOL - I just edited my post before you replied to that to cover that one :) - I suppose I am just an Xrefs person... l really like to work like that, and seems like it is a simpler concept than worksets - doesnt really take a lot of setting up or managing.

[iru69]

I used lots of xrefs in AutoCAD and never found them difficult. However, I find it really refreshing that they're not necessary in Revit. I really like the one-file model. Much simpler to manage - no worries about an xref getting moved, deleted, etc. xrefs seem to move us away from the idea that the whole model is one thing that gets updated and stays current every time anything gets changed. I would say rather than utilizing xrefs to fix performance issues, the Factory should concentrate on fixing the performance issues themselves (e.g. groups slowing things down - that's counterintuitive).

Worksets are fantastic - and even better in 8.1. Worksets often sound much scarier and more complicated than they are. I was a bit intimidated about using them at first (and it used to create that very scary looking backup folder), but now I immediately enable them on every project. And with 8.1, the whole business about "checking" items out has become much more transparent. You can use them much like virtual layers or xrefs if you want - but unlike layers, you can close worksets that you don't need to improve performance. And unlike xrefs, they're all part of one model.

[Martin P]

I used lots of xrefs in AutoCAD and never found them difficult. However, I find it really refreshing that they're not necessary in Revit. I really like the one-file model. Much simpler to manage - no worries about an xref getting moved, deleted, etc. xrefs seem to move us away from the idea that the whole model is one thing that gets updated and stays current every time anything gets changed. I would say rather than utilizing xrefs to fix performance issues, the Factory should concentrate on fixing the performance issues themselves (e.g. groups slowing things down - that's counterintuitive).

Worksets are fantastic - and even better in 8.1. Worksets often sound much scarier and more complicated than they are. I was a bit intimidated about using them at first (and it used to create that very scary looking backup folder), but now I immediately enable them on every project. And with 8.1, the whole business about "checking" items out has become much more transparent. You can use them much like virtual layers or xrefs if you want - but unlike layers, you can close worksets that you don't need to improve performance. And unlike xrefs, they're all part of one model.

maybe I should try them again - the last time I did, I got "cant save to central" and pretty much ran a mile with that, was some time ago now though I suppose. seemed like a lot of setting up too, but I suppose you will get used to that..

[anders.hedman]

After following the discussion above I think I just have to reorganize the worksets in the project to achieve better performance.

The bigger but faster project is in fact better organized with more different worksets, also of course to be turned off. I think this is the answer to my primary question. It would of course be nice in future if one also could gain performance by grouping things.

By us worksets has worked out well so far and are not difficult to set up