Our Project is SOOO Slow - Please Help!!!

[..shaner]

Hi everyone, i hope you guys can help me out with this one. I'm working on a 100,000sqft condo, the model is at about 80% complete, we have no schedules, but we've started detailing some wall sections. The central file is about 60megs and there are 2 of us working on it, and its soooo slow.

We are both running Pentium 'D' Dual Core 3GHz with serial ATA hard drives, ATI Fire GL 5100 128 meg video cards, and 2 gigs of ddr ram.

We dont really want to work in worksets because it becomes hard to update multiple floors on multiple work sets along with building sections, etc.

Its becoming hard to get anything done because the speed of drafting is almost painful. Is there anyway to clean the file or purge it to make things run faster? or is there something else we can do?

BTW, we always save and 'compact the central file'

thanks for any advice

[RobG]

first off, revit doesn't take advantage of the dual cores.. sucks i know, but that's the nature of the beast. second, if you have curtain wall/store front then i suggest turning off the mullions in the visibility settings. and last, yes, you can purge.. FILE > PURGE UNUSED

other then that, i can't imagine not working in worksets, the ability to turn on and off worksets that you need/dont need has proven SOO valuable for us. we're working on a 48 story hotel tower fully glazed in curtain wall (which we have MINIMAL mullions, most is just the linework of the grid)

hope others have advise also!

ps. how's the weather in Canada? i sure don't miss the snow since i moved south of 49 a year ago

[..shaner]

how do you organize you worksets? i ask because we use groups for all of our suites and these worksets cause problems when we have groups like that, how do you set up your drawings so you keep consistancy in your suites and break stuff up into worksets aswell?

its about 65 here today but the rest of the week is going to be about 70ish

but i live in southern ontario i cant speek for the rest of the great white.. heh

[RobG]

here's the basics behind our worksets..

tower - structure
tower - shell (all my CW and precast at the base)
tower - interiors (we link in our rooms/suites)
tower - grid
podium - structure
podium - shell
podium - interiors
podium - grid
and so on.

some projects have worksets for the existing stuff if we're doing additions, some projects have worksets for landscaping if it's an outdoor venue (ie pool renovation, outdoor concert venue, etc..) we have some BIG projects in revit these days, and we've managed to get rid of our speed issue that you seem to have run into. my current project is running at about 80MB and we compress it regularly also.

getting used to worksets took a bit of effort, but in the end it's REALLY worth it. a bit intimidating at first, we all kinda hesitated about them here, but we're thankful we use em!

hope that helps

[sbrown]

are you using selective open? if not that should help.

[Les Therrien]

Shaner!

I'm in Windsor! What office (company) are you in?

[cphubb]

Shaner,

When you said your are using Groups did you mean literally grouping all the condos? If so I think that is what is slowing the model down.

We experimented with that on a 16 unit apartment complex and it was sooooo slow we could not use it.

We changed the groups to a family and copied it around, much better. With the edit family button in 8 changing the family layout should be easy.

However we have now switched to using worksets on our multi family projects, allows multiple people to work and speeds the project.

BTW I am originally from Detroit , what condo tower are you working on?

[weston]

My office has also had the problem with using groups for the condo units in a 120 unit building. I have heard about making the unit a family but am not really sure how one would go about it. Could somebody either explain better or post a generic example that I could play around with?
Thank a bunch
Weston

[RobG]

to get back to the idea of worksets, a nice way to get used to them is when working in a set, you can then "gray inactive worksets" it grays them out just enough to see a difference without being too pale. at least that way you know you're always on the right workset.

[..shaner]

Shaner,

When you said your are using Groups did you mean literally grouping all the condos? If so I think that is what is slowing the model down.

We experimented with that on a 16 unit apartment complex and it was sooooo slow we could not use it.

We changed the groups to a family and copied it around, much better. With the edit family button in 8 changing the family layout should be easy.

However we have now switched to using worksets on our multi family projects, allows multiple people to work and speeds the project.

BTW I am originally from Detroit , what condo tower are you working on?


were working on a new place 3 story place here in essex county

what were doing is making a group of walls doors, windows, etc of what makes up the unit and copying around

so did you make the entire unit a family??

[..shaner]

everyone..

i was discussing it with my friend and we were thinking that maybe the next time we do this, we'd make the entire shell ( outside walls, floors, stairs, elevators, outside doors window, etc, you know), one workgroup, and then the units (as groups) as another workgroup. is this similar to what everyone else does?

is there anything else you guys would separate into a different family?

[ilya.bass]

everyone..

i was discussing it with my friend and we were thinking that maybe the next time we do this, we'd make the entire shell ( outside walls, floors, stairs, elevators, outside doors window, etc, you know), one workgroup, and then the units (as groups) as another workgroup. is this similar to what everyone else does?

is there anything else you guys would separate into a different family?

I don't think separating into more worksets will help. I suggest you take full advantage of your subscription and contact Support with this issue. they will be happy to advise (and will engage us Developers as needed).

[bowlingbrad]

The "compress file" option just saves disk space. This is something to use only when you are running low on disk space. That is one source of your slowdown. Also, if you use worksets and use your local hard drive for local files, that should speed things up a bit too.

[Steve Cashman]

The "compress file" option just saves disk space. This is something to use only when you are running low on disk space. That is one source of your slowdown. Also, if you use worksets and use your local hard drive for local files, that should speed things up a bit too.
I agree with what Brad says here. We have projects larger than what you have with worksets enabled. We locate the central file on our server and work on local files. The local files are much better and faster than accessing a file off of the network. With worksets, we open only what we need.

As for worksets, we separate the building into worksets to all different individuals to work on separate tasks (i.e., exterior walls, windows, interior walls, doors, structure, floors, plumbing fixtures, specialties, etc.). Graying the inactive worksets makes it easy to manage and 8.1 improved borrowing elements.

Good luck.

[cphubb]

We have actually made the entire interior of the Apartment a family in a couple of cases. Most of our multi family are small enough that we do not need to create the family.

We struggled a little on the 2 we did using the family approach (As well as worksets for multi user,) however we determined the following

1. All interior walls (not demising) are in the family
2. All fixtures, casework, furniture etc are in the family
3. Ceilings are in the family as are any attached items
4. We ended up creating a "Stud" only wall for the demising because we could not hang anything on the walls since they were not in the family. Our family has a single or double layer of GWB as its outside walls.
5. Use reference planes to represent the center of the demising walls to keep the bays spaced correctly
6. We had 2-4 odd units that ended up being live in the project
7. We assigned all the apartment families to a separate workset and turned it off most of the time

That being said, I also agree with everyone above that using the worksets and working on a local copy is the best way to speed up working in a project any project large enough to warrant 2 users has worksets in our office and the amount of projects that use them is growing.

[RobG]

as i mentioned earlier, we break down our project to SEVERAL workgroups and it makes a huge difference. Why should i have revit regenerate the stairs in all my views if i know they're right and won't move again, when i can just turn them off using the workset manager and let them be?!?

It makes no sense for me to have all sorts of work being generated and processed when i can have it turned off. Working on a 48 story tower, at floor 48, means i shouldn't have to generate my podium information time and time again for nothing. I knoe personally i work in 3D alot, i don't want to be showing something that is at the bottom like a glass done, or intererior walls that i'm not working on and so on...

so as shaner asked, is there anything else to break it down? yeah, disect it a decent amount, don't get crazy, but no point in processing info you don't need!

[hworrell]

cphubb,

What type of "family" did you use when you began this process...Generic Model?

Thanks,

[mccurdyks]

I don't know how you're detailing, but that could make a huge difference, too. We had an autocad old timer here who drafted EVERYTHING on his wall sections as lines when we moved him to Revit without any training. Like Autocad, he created all his details elements as groups of linework and copy/pasted everywhere, instead of using detail components. The result was 45 minute saves to central. Once those were taken out, 2-3 minute saves. A good example were all the brick joints in every wall section - drafted lines, grouped them, and pasted everywhere instead of using detail components.

[kpferrante851725]

Generally speaking:

Trying removing constraints throughout the model and only constrain with object families and in-place families. Constraints makes Revit have to look at every object more than it wants too. Trying constraining only by level.

In terms of unit design, if its really serious, build your units in a seperate model, but dont build into your demising or exterior walls. Re-import your unit model as cad underlays.

I also recommend auditing and purging your central file and remaking your locals on a consistent basis for a 10-20% increase in speed.

[dgraue]

Shaner,

When you said your are using Groups did you mean literally grouping all the condos? If so I think that is what is slowing the model down.

We experimented with that on a 16 unit apartment complex and it was sooooo slow we could not use it.

We changed the groups to a family and copied it around, much better. With the edit family button in 8 changing the family layout should be easy.

However we have now switched to using worksets on our multi family projects, allows multiple people to work and speeds the project.

BTW I am originally from Detroit , what condo tower are you working on?

I don't quite understand how families for unit plans would work efficiently? You constantly have to go out of the project model to make changes to each unit, then load it back to see how it relates to adjacent units, walls, components, stairs, etc. The family method for unit plans seems very much like autocad workflow with xrefs. Now granted, Groups are buggy, slow and temperamental and have a long way to go to live up to their intent (and are very disappointing to me), but at least they have a live association with the project.

I've tried "In-place-families" too but those get wacky once in a while when they are copied to other levels.

As far as unit plans as groups are concerned, use 2D components for plumbing fixtures and casework/cabinets. Only use these 3D components in one of each unit plan (where you need them for enlarged elevations, sections and perspective views) and don't make these part of the unit group. Typically you do not need to show a 3D kitchen sink for each of the 200 apartment units in your project. Sure it's cool, but not necessary. This will help to speed up the revit file.

DG