Large Project Advice ! ! !

[cchollet]

Hello to all, hope that you can help me with this one cause i an getting frustated...i have a hotel project with 7 buildings 3-4 story in height it has 12 types of unit rooms, so i made each unit type a file that i linked into the master file, then i made groups per level with the links to create each of the buildings...i made worksets per building so we can share the workload with my teammates, and we have a central file with local copies on our local drives...but the file is too slow to work with.. i dont know if i did the correct setup, i was thinking on changing the units to groups instead of file links, don't know if it will help..the other idea was to make files of each building an then linking them into a master file for site plan purposes but if it's linked when i link it again it looses the unit links if you know what i mean...

Any ideas ???
Thanks a lot.

[greg.mcdowell]

I'll throw out a thing or two to think about...

Separate buildings should be in their own file and linked into an overall site plan which can be linked back into each building model file and cropped down to size as necessary. Placing each building in it's own workset in a single file can work too provided you always open the file with only the workset/building you're working on but I think the multi-file approach is cleaner.

Interesting idea making each unit a separate file... I haven't heard of that approach yet so I don't know the pros-cons of it. Typically groups are considered problematic for this type of work (walls and wall hosted objects in particular tend to mess things up) too. If the units are consistent vertically (meaning they stack) the best idea is to draw the walls on one level and to extend them up through the building and join the geometry in sections to clean things up. You can group the objects within the units that stack but again, be aware of hosted objects.

Lastly, are you using a lot of in-place Curtain Wall Grids and Mullions? If so consider building as much of this as possible as a Panel Family... all those mullions really slow things down (each grid segment gets its own mullion so on a large project there are literally thousands of pieces).

[cchollet]

Thanks for your tip...i think i will do tests borth both options....guess no weekend for me.

[s.messing]

Be very careful with groups in general. I have become very wary of what they can do to the performance of a file based on what I am seeing in my office. Especially around the subject of wall joins, etc. Heed Greg's advice about clean joins. That seems to keep Revit thinking for awhile.

As for your methodology, you are on the right track to address the subjects you have listed such as worksets, groups, and links. I would be interested to hear more details about your specific problems. When is it slow (doing what?)? How slow is slow? How big is your file(s)? We seem to be having some success in keeping our files reasonably functional by scheduling file cleanups, trying to keep imports and links to a minimum, and following some loose (and getting tighter) user guidelines. You should definitely check out some previous posts, such as the one I started a while back about Performance Optimization:
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=45580
Good luck. It will all work out in the end.
Cheers,
Stephen

[cchollet]

Thanks Stephen, well i mean slow by waiting about 10 mnin to open the local copy file i made from the central one, that is located on our server, the central file is aprox. 20 mb, but since i have the units linked, there are aprox. 15 revit links sizing aprox 2-3 mb each one and i manage to name each link (i.e. 201,202...301,302, being the same link repeated on each level) so i can turn the upper/lower levels on each view hoping it help with speed. also we have 1-2 dwg links that i keep unloaded until i print for the same reason.

Going back to my original thread i said that a file that has links, if you link it to a main file (i.e. Master site plan) it looses the links but i an going to try to relink the files and see if that works, so building A will be a single file with only 3-4 revit links depdending on the units it has per bldg. The other reason i have to do this is beacause the grids are going to start "A" & "1" on each bldg., i cannot use the same grid # or letter on the same file, or can i ???

Thanks again for your help and time...