Revit & Processing Speed

[photography67836]

Hi all,

These are some general questions/beefs regarding processing power and Revit.

From day one, we have been doing "larger" projects (+/- 30 megs) and I still am not totally impressed with the lags I have been experiencing to date. I know there are certain tweaks that help, but this is an overall comment.

I cannot use the openGL since there is a glitch, and I HAVE downloaded the up to date drivers. I know this isn't a big thing in processing, but the screen refreshes can be annoyingly long. When doing well joins, moves, etc. they take a while to regen - not sure if this is processing or screen regeneration. Ideas?

We work a LOT with groups and they really slow everything down. I hope that the development team is looking into making groups more efficient, and more intuitive.

I have dual 2.0 Athlons running - but I don't think that Revit is using them together.Correct? Also, I am not sure what is more important -RAM or the processor speed...but I have been told I have a smoking machine. Hmmm.

Has anyone else experienced any of this?

Sorry bout the rant, but I guess the pressure from clients these days is getting to me. The bar seems to get set higher and higher with the quality of work the Revit puts out - I just would like Revit to work as fast I am trying to. I know I am comparing apples to bananas but I still find it refreshing to go to Acad 2000 once in a while just for the sheer speed.

[hand471037]

Just a few things:

1. Revit only uses Duals when rendering. Otherwise there is no speed increase with Duals.

2. Revit seems to like Ram, Processing Speed, and a 3D card- in that order. Go with at least a gig, and two if you're rendering...

3. Screen refreshes can take a lot longer over dual monitors, as well as if you have lots of views open and overlapping. I tend to only have one view fully maximised, or if I've want multipule views open, I'll minimise the ones I'm not working in and only have two or three open and once.

Just a few tips..

[sbrown]

Unfortunately your dual 2000 are not worth much to revit. A single p4 3.0 gig would be much faster. 30 megs is not a very large file for revit, most of mine are 50-80mb and move just fine. These are also highly detailed models. The trick is all in the way you work. Don't open what you aren't working on. Use worksets and selective open to open only what you need when you need it. Your local saves will only take a second compared to minutes in a non worksets envirnoment. Note your STC will take some time, but thats not bad, just plan to get up an stretch.

As for machines, the fastest revit machine I've worked on is Dual Xeons with 2 gig ram. Note that that was super fast for rendering and still fast for daily reviting. My current p4 3.0 gig with 2 gig of ram is totally satisfactory(Jim don't read this).

I believe the group issue is as you stated a big problem. I basically use groups just to populate the model, then I ungroup them, if I need to make a change I delete and replace the new group, I know this sounds bad but unfortunately revit and groups just fall short. Getting better, but still not there yet.

[photography67836]

Thanks for the replies. I download the latest video drivers - (I wasn't up to date!) and the OpenGL is quite improved. Those groups though....argh. Doing weird things. The workset suggestion is a good one. We are doing some projects using them and doing local saves are wayyy quicker than the non-workset saves or save to central. I'll use worksets on all future projects. Also I am trying to always close hidden windows whenever I can. It seems to keep things running well.

I'll be getting an upgrade to a single processor (3.0 MHz) and hopefully 2 G ram in the next month. Should be an noticeable change in performance...

[shaunv68276]

Jason
besides the 3.2 prescot, 512 graphics card & 2GB ram
the bigest asset I have to my setup is the serial 2X120GB hard drives with raid.
Its all about disk access when it comes to those 60-120MB files

[FK]

I'll tell you a secret about the graphics card -

Between very fast very compatible card with little video RAM (as little as 32 MB!) and slow/incompatible card with lots of RAM... pick the first one.

[beegee]

... and the very compatible cards are ?

[Wes Macaulay]

Yeah... I would love to hear -- informally -- about some cards that are working well with Revit and OpenGL.

I have a Close Hidden Windows shortcut which allows my old PIII laptop to survive on larger files. Fast RAM specs (400 Mhz and up) also speed things up.

[gbrowne]

Whats that all about!? Everybody surely must be experiencing the same issues with harware and performance and possibly budget, then somebody from Autodesk says I will let you into a secret?! I suppose they can't officially back one manufacturer over another, but for gawds sake, can't they tell us some more of these "secrets"!!

The customer is always right; sort it out.

[Wes Macaulay]

Check out the hardware that works with OpenGL threads... the guys at the factory would need to work full time at this to keep up!

[FK]

Sigh... the word "secret" was used as a joke. All there is to it is that Revit does not benefit from oversized video RAM, unlike overly textured video games. Which is not secret. (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=2025) Currently, 32 MB will work fine. So don't invest in video RAM, look at other features instead.

Your best resource for compatibility information is this (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=2926) and this (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=2927). (Admins: why not make them sticky). (Ed by SD: Done! Stuck threads...)