Revit 2008 and overlay planes

[Wes Macaulay]

After filing a support request because of crashes we were experiencing with Revit 2008, we have been told by Autodesk to enable overlay planes in Revit (under Settings > Options > Graphics). Enabling overlay planes has caused these stability problems to disappear. Because Revit is using a newer version of the OpenGL language, it now appears that overlay planes should be enabled in Revit. If you are having stability problems with Revit 2008, enable overlay planes and see if your problems continue.

Note that in the latest build of Revit 2008 use of overlay planes is no longer mandatory. This improves display of annotations that have a transparent background. If you continue to experience instability with overlay planes off, turn them back on and see if instability continues. If it does, post here in this forum and we'll try to help resolve the problem.

[Lashers]

Wes, does that mean that OpenGL in on its way out? The only way I get Revit to display properly is OpenGL off / Overlay Planes on.

[Wes Macaulay]

What card do you have mate? If you can't use OpenGL, then your card isn't compatible with the OpenGL implementation used in Revit 2008.

Or more to the point: the manufacturer's drivers aren't working right with Revit.

OpenGL for CAD is here to stay for some time ;-)

[sultarc]

I've had some crashes in the last two days with open GL enabled. It worked well for a few days then started acting up. With Open GL enabled, I get a message at each startup something like, due to operation system limitations and graphics card some graphics may not appear correctly. Then it says to turn it off if you have problems.

I don't know if the crashes I had had anything to do with open GL being on. I do know that with it on everything with shadows enabled works better.

So both open GL and overlay planes both need to be enabled?

[Wes Macaulay]

The crashes may well have to do with Overlay Planes being disabled. My crashes would occur if Overlay Planes were disabled, with OpenGL on or off! So with 2008 it appears that the ideal setting is with both OpenGL and Overlay Planes enabled.

[Lashers]

Wes, I have a ATi FireGL V3400. I switche to Vista a bit quick and put the card in after . . . thinking about doing a cold install of Vista and re-installing all my progs and or going back to XP Pro . .??

[BomberAIA]

My computer started to lag and I thought something was running in the background. I turned Open GL off and it worked fine. If I turn Overlay Planes off and Open GL on, it works a little weird but it speeds up Revit when I have the shadows on. My card is an ATI X1900. Everything worked fine before the upgrade.

[trombe]

Wes,
I also agree that Open GL = On and Overlay Planes = On works great, with no current problems with shadows (ahhhh. almost like Bailey's Irish cream ) being smooth, rendering no problems at all, no crashes with RA08.

LEADTEK Quadro FX1500 256 Mb PCI_Express, original NVidia drivers out of box.
(brand new last week)
good !

regards
trombe

[dhurtubise]

I used NVidia in the past (Dell) and now im stock with ATI (Lenovo) nad Nvidia are light years ahead of what ATI can do. So with Dell both we're on without any problems.
It was an M90 btw

[BomberAIA]

I talked to Revit at the AIA Convention and he told me Revit uses Open GL for some graphic operations and Overlay Planes for other. He told me 08 changed the way Revit uses both. That is why my ATI X1900 is not working w/ great performance.

[Wes Macaulay]

Wes, I have a ATi FireGL V3400. I switche to Vista a bit quick and put the card in after . . . thinking about doing a cold install of Vista and re-installing all my progs and or going back to XP Pro . .??Well.... it's going to be a few more months before Vista drivers can be depended upon for many CAD users, and because they're a completely different driver set than XP/2000, your experience on XP will be different on Vista. XP might work, Vista might not, or vice versa.

I lean towards XP at this point, but at some point the bugs may be worked out with regards to Vista video drivers and then perhaps we'll all be happy!

[Soren P. Sorensen]

After filing a support request because of crashes we were experiencing with Revit 2008, we have been told by Autodesk to enable overlay planes in Revit (under Settings > Options > Graphics). Enabling overlay planes has caused these stability problems to disappear. Because Revit is using a newer version of the OpenGL language, it now appears that overlay planes should be enabled in Revit. If you are having stability problems with Revit 2008, enable overlay planes and see if your problems continue.

Ok I will try that !

[neb1998]

What version of the open GL implementation is revit 2008 using?

[jeffh]

What version of the open GL implementation is revit 2008 using?

From the system recommendations:

System Recommendations:
Intel Core® 2 Duo 2.40 GHz, or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
Windows XP Professional (SP2 or later)
4 GB RAM
5 GB free disk space
Dedicated video card with hardware support for OpenGL® spec 1.3 or later
Two-button mouse with scroll wheel

Found at:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8479263

[Jay Zallan]

This is a great thread, very helpful: I have one question to clarify something I have heard 2nd hand (supposedly directly from a developer of Revit, but I am leary)...

Q: Is it true that Revit only uses 128 MB of any Video card, no matter the card's capacity? It was said that the developer (unfortunately I didn't get a name) needed to be prodded into actually answering...which I can understand that if it's true.

Perhaps someone can let me know before I buy another card...

-J

[Wes Macaulay]

Our developer friend told us that Revit could actually get by with a 32Mb card since Revit does depend on textures very much. As other applications do, you might wish for a card with more -- 128 is a good starting point.

[Wes Macaulay]

Ok I will try that !Just a note that Overlay Planes are no longer needed to be enabled; the latest two builds of 2008 run fine with them off, which I prefer since it makes transparent-background annotations more readable.

[patricks]

I have been having quite a few problems the past couple of weeks of getting a "error has occurred while drawing the contents of this window, the window will be closed" message. It always happens while zooming in or out. In the past it would just make the window close, but now, just within the past few weeks, it makes the whole program freeze up. I have to kill the program and I lose whatever I've done since my last save or STC, which is EXTREMELY annoying. It's making me paranoid and doing an STC like every 30 minutes or so, but in some cases I lose an hour or more of work.

I'm running an nVidia Quadro FX540 128MB card, with dual dual-core Xeon processors. Both OpenGL and Overlay Planes are turned on, which is how I've been running for many Revit versions now, and I've never had this problem until just a few weeks ago. Now it's been happening on almost a daily basis.

Any ideas?

[sbrown]

Is there a dwg in the view? Try with overlay planes off. Its a graphics issue, if you can't figure it out you'll have to turn off open gl and/or hardware accelleration.

[Andrew Dobson]

I have been having quite a few problems the past couple of weeks of getting a "error has occurred while drawing the contents of this window, the window will be closed" message.


This happens to me as well, but it doesnt freeze the entire program. It seems to be to do with nvidia graphics cards, although my quadro 550XGL is fine - it is mostly the cheaper GeForce cards that cause problems - we dont have this problem with ATI Radeon 9600 cards, and these are very cheap.

I hope to be getting a firegl class card soon as reommended by Wes. The ATI FireGL V3350 looks good, and not too expensive.

[patricks]

Is there a dwg in the view? Try with overlay planes off. Its a graphics issue, if you can't figure it out you'll have to turn off open gl and/or hardware accelleration.

Yes there are 3 DWG's linked into the project, but currently all 3 are turned off in the view I was working in. I keep them turned off, except only when necessary for reference, or one that will be turned on for the final prints.

Should I turn of OpenGL or overlay planes? I had been running both turned on, and I never had an issue before 2008, or really before just a few weeks ago.

In my mind, if I turn of OpenGL, it seems like I'm not really getting full use of my graphics card, which supports OpenGL. I noticed with OpenGL turned off, it takes a LONG time to regenerate views with shadows turned on.

[dhurtubise]

One funnt fact is that i use a T60P from IBM. I have open GL off and Overlay Planes on, no crash and it runs pretty smoothly.
One of my collegue got the same (they all get imaged) and he's Open GL on and Overlay Planes off to avoid crashed.
Does it mean it would be tied to modelling or elements more then video card ?

[samov]

you should make sure you're running the latest build of 2008, it fixed a lot of problems with opengl... also make sure oyu have the latest video drivers...