Revit 2009 - Performance [Archive]

patricks

2008-04-17, 04:45 PM

I just opened and upgraded one of our larger projects - a 650,000 s.f. Coca-Cola manufacturing plant, warehouse, & distribution center - which is a 34MB file for the main building with a 21MB file linked in for the truck and vending machine repair building and other out-buildings on the campus. I upgraded both files to 2009 format.

View performance in the plan views seemed a little slow, but then again we have several HUGE dwg files linked in showing all the equipment, production lines, warehouse racks and pallets, etc. etc.

View performance in 3D (with DWG's turned off, but linked out-building file turned on) seemed fine on my dual dual-core Xeon machine. I'm running an nVIDIA QuadroFX 550 graphics card. OpenGL is turned on. I turned on shadows and it still seemed to work okay. I will try it again in a moment and see how it works with OpenGL turned off.

*edit
Now with OpenGL turned off, 3D seems a touch faster with shadows off, but MUCH slower with shadows turned on.

Also, with OpenGL turned off, zooming and panning in my overall plan view with all the DWG's turned on is much slower.

I think I'll keep OpenGL on for now, seems that it's working the best with this project, which is the largest building we've ever done in Revit. We usually do much smaller projects - 20,000 s.f. or less - so I think it'll be running fine.

guy.messick825831

2008-04-17, 10:21 PM

Honestly, I'm shocked at the peformance hit with RAC 2009. Plan, 3D, etc. - all slower, on all machines. We were gung ho to upgrade, as are our consultants, but I'm going to sleep on it - I'm thinking I'll wait for a while. And right when I need sloped pads!

FYI, our reseller said "but it's a new release!" Autodesk needs to get over that attitude real quick.

Thanks for hearing my rant....

Wes Macaulay

2008-04-18, 05:36 AM

Anyone who tells anyone that this new release is not slower in the video department than 2008 is drinking the company Kool-Aid ;-)

It's broken and needs to be fixed. I'm hoping that we're getting better performance in all other areas though. But I won't know, because I'm not rolling out 2009 till the video performance is at least as good as 2008. Plus I'm leery of even starting a new project fresh in 2009 because of all the stability issues there seem to be at present.

AP23

2008-04-18, 08:26 AM

ilya.bass

2008-04-18, 02:38 PM

Ironically, the alpha verion of Revit 2009 has the same level of performance as 2008. Might be worth using it untill the new build comes out. Besides, it's packed with "rhino-ish" features that haven't made it to the the official release.

I am not sure where the news of "rhino-ish" features is coming from, but it's just not true. I will see if someone more qualified than I can post a more official response, but I want to stop this rumor from spreading, since it's not going to help anyone if people engage in wishful thinking of this sort.

As for the performance issues, one known problem has been traced to outdated version of graphics card drivers. So the recommended solution would be to check with the provider of your graphics card and download and install the latest drivers. If that does not help, please contact Support for further trouble-shooting.

Thanks

guy.messick825831

2008-04-18, 03:24 PM

I can't speak for everyone, but we are pretty sophisticated when it comes to keeping our drivers up to speed. That isn't it. If Autodesk doesn't want scurrilous rumors spreading, I suggest they deal with this issue head on.

brangera

2008-04-18, 03:32 PM

RAC 2009 is at 30% slower than 2008. I'll wait until they release a new build.

twiceroadsfool

2008-04-18, 03:33 PM

Weird... We havent experienced any slowdown at all performance wise, and we are in 7 linked models that were all upgraded from the post y2k8 build of 2008, and those files were upgrades from the previous build of 2008.

ilya.bass

2008-04-18, 03:37 PM

RAC 2009 is at 30% slower than 2008. I'll wait until they release a new build.

As we work on new releases, we run pretty comprehensive performance tests and we watch these things very closely to prevent slowdowns. So if you are experiencing issues that we didn't see in-house, they may have a number of explanations; to be able to answer and deal with them, it would help us immensly to get specifics reported to Support (what operations are slow, in what models, on what hardware configurations).

thank you for your patience and understanding.

ilya.bass

2008-04-18, 03:50 PM

gwnelson

2008-04-18, 03:55 PM

Aget specifics reported to Support (what operations are slow, in what models, on what hardware configurations)

I'll bite. Please see my recent post regarding printing to PDF. Where do I send my computer to be analyzed?

ilya.bass

2008-04-18, 04:01 PM

I'll bite. Please see my recent post regarding printing to PDF. Where do I send my computer to be analyzed?

it may not be necessary to send in the hardware. Support has means of getting certain key information from Revit journals and other places. The best thing to do is log a case with Support (via subscription center) - they will ask for data and work with you to resolve the issue.

ron.sanpedro

2008-04-18, 04:02 PM

FYI, our reseller said "but it's a new release!" Autodesk needs to get over that attitude real quick.

Just read last night that OS X is perhaps the only software anywhere to consistently get faster with each new release, on the same hardware. This is not so much an "I want a Mac port" statement as it is proof that you CAN make software faster with each release, and still be adding great new features. It IS technically possible. So yeah, the "but it's a new release!" comment is pretty lame, and a little embarrassing. I guess Autodesk doesn't want Revit to be "insanely Great!", just "passably profitable".

Gordon

GuyR

2008-04-18, 07:27 PM

Ilya,

Can someone from Autodesk, either yourself or others please confirm what some suspect that OpenGL is now implemented on top of DirectX as a first step towards full DirectX support?

There are many people spending a lot of time trying to tweak performance on their PC's. A move to DirectX is a fundamental graphic card issue, many who are considering new graphic cards and many firms will be buying/leasing new PC's this year.

I would think few if any would not appreciate some honesty here. If Autodesk have decided they are moving Revit to DirectX then so be it.

Cheers,

Guy

Wes Macaulay

2008-04-18, 07:43 PM

dfriesen

2008-04-18, 08:32 PM

Just so you all know -- the release version is faster than the final beta version, at least here on our FireGL-equipped machines using the latest drivers.
Ah, good to know. That gives me justification for blowing off some of the work I should be doing, and get the new install set up. Thanks Wes!! :lol:

dfriesen

2008-04-18, 08:39 PM

By the way, is there anything I should know about the switch over from beta to release? Uninstall and reg clean, or is a straight install ok? Does the file preview get fixed with the release install?

Wes Macaulay

2008-04-18, 08:40 PM

I uninstalled then reinstalled, nothing else ;-)

GuyR

2008-04-18, 08:54 PM

Does the file preview get fixed with the release install?

Not on my WinXP32 PC.

armbarsalot

2008-04-18, 09:23 PM

I've been through a lot of releases of autocad, ADT ect, if you expect a better product in the long run you may be disappointed. They will change the interface, add a few widgets, usually a few real enhancements call it a release, not fixing previous flaws. As long as you expect this you will never be disappointed. The irrational part is when they mess with the workflow, ie when ADT became incompatible with VIZ 4 ect., but thats the way it goes, buy more subscriptions & go with the flow, or use old processes that work.

2008 is working pretty good right now, no need for 2009 until its a clear advantage.

dfriesen

2008-04-18, 10:07 PM

Ah, good to know. That gives me justification for blowing off some of the work I should be doing, and get the new install set up. Thanks Wes!! :lol:
Well, ****! Just after I uninstalled, the boss comes by with a minor revision and a 'send this off asap to the client'. The only other machine with 2009 is busy on a render. I tried installing, and it's got errors. Uninstall, reg clean, reboot, reinstall - no dice. :banghead:

Time for :beer: I guess...

Scott D Davis

2008-04-20, 09:32 PM

I uninstalled then reinstalled, nothing else ;-)

The installer will prompt you to uninstall old versions. Your choice to leave 'em there or uninstall them.

ckc.mike

2008-04-21, 01:13 PM

As we work on new releases, we run pretty comprehensive performance tests and we watch these things very closely to prevent slowdowns. So if you are experiencing issues that we didn't see in-house, they may have a number of explanations; to be able to answer and deal with them, it would help us immensly to get specifics reported to Support (what operations are slow, in what models, on what hardware configurations).

thank you for your patience and understanding.

From what you saying, you guys are pretty confident with the "Slow Down" issue had been well addressed in-house. Therefore, I assume the programing of the new release is pretty well built. So the performance variation between the test you did in-house and the test we did on our PCs, more or less are caused by the hardware configurations and the operation system.
So could you please tell us, what are the hardware configurations and operation system you guys used in-house for the performance test? (Including all the 'tweak' you guys did to the PCs, if any). So we are able to build a PCs to 'match' with the performance test you did in-house. I guess that sound pretty fair.

MRV

2008-04-21, 01:46 PM

I can't tell you about their's, but here's mine (with no major problems or slowdowns like your'e talking about):

XP SP2 (this install is over a year old) w/o the 3gb switch
Intel E6600 2.4 Core 2 Duo, MSI P965 Platinum MB (last year's hot stuff... really old now)
2 GB Corsair DDR2-667
PNY Quadro FX1500 with latest drivers (169.39 and 169.47 now tested)

Most of my revit files are <100mb...

patricks

2008-04-21, 02:22 PM

No major issues here, either.

Dell Precision 490 w/ dual dual-core Xeon 2.66 GHz processors
4 MB ram
10K RPM HDD
nVIDIA QuadroFX 550 dual-DVI graphics card

ckc.mike

2008-04-21, 02:31 PM

I understand that the performance issue is not happen to everyone. What i am try here is to narrow down the possiblities which vary the performance.
Since the hardware configurations from PCs to PCs could be great vary, so I would very interested to know the hardware configurations they used to run thier performance test in-house. Therefore, we can compare 'Apple with Apple', and we would able to match the performance which Autodesk expected.

gwnelson

2008-04-21, 02:45 PM

I am just now beginning to see some graphics problems that weren't here on Friday.

Seeing entire areas blacked out like a filled region, getting error "this window shall be closed...", sticky panning (wprse than before) - all in simple plan view or section, shadows off.

Running PNY Quadro FX1400 w/ drivers from early last week, XP SP2, 4 Gb, Intel 6700 Dual core on Asus Mobo.

MRV

2008-04-21, 04:31 PM

Make sure you file a support request on this. I had this exact thing happen to me after I upgraded my video card driver for the Quadro FX1500... I rolled the driver back and fixed the problem, but I've since gone back to the newest driver, and don't have any problems, yet. These are the kind of things that the Revit team need to see.

iru69

2008-04-21, 04:55 PM

The only pattern I've seen so far is that ATI cards appear to be having the most problems related to zooming/panning/orbiting with OpenGL on. Nvidia cards appear to be doing much better in this department.

Nvidia cards tend more to have more crashing problems with Revit, but that's nothing new.

I would really be lmao right now at how badly Autodesk messed this up if it wasn't all so frustrating.

gwnelson

2008-04-21, 05:09 PM

Just filed a support request.

Everything should be hunky-dory any minute now...

guy.messick825831

2008-04-21, 05:10 PM

Actually, we have Nividia cards primarily. The main testing system I'm using is a Dell Precision M90, Core2 T7400 @ 2.16GHz, 2GB Ram, Nvidia FX1500M. I've checked drivers, and the perfomance is noticably worse than Revit RAC 2008, OpenGL on or off, 3D or 2D. Just to beat the dead horse, again. I've submitted support requests, and have contacted our reseller. We are ordering several quad core workstations w/ 4 gigs, maybe that will work! (snark)

iru69

2008-04-21, 05:17 PM

I want to clarify that video graphic performance is noticeably worse with our nvidia card workstations as well.

But the lag with our ATI FGL V3400 and Radeon X1600 mobility (laptop) is unusable. With OpenGL on, there can be lags of five to ten seconds when zooming in, or fifteen seconds to regenerate an elevation with shadows.

The same computers, it's smooth and instantaneous in 2008.

Wes Macaulay

2008-04-21, 05:40 PM

Even though it's better than the beta, display performance in 2009 is noticably worse than 2008. Where I notice it most is when using the mouse wheel to zoom -- in 2009 it's dead slow compared to the much smoother and faster performance of 2008.

Because people are accustomed to zooming and panning using the wheelmouse, all kinds of time will be lost to this performance problem, and I would recommend against anyone installing 2009 until this is resolved.

I am sure Autodesk is working on a fix for this at present. As a workaround, people can Ctrl + wheelmouse + move mouse up and down, but this may feel awkward for many people.

scott.latch

2008-04-21, 07:05 PM

I would like to reiterate what Ilya and Tamas have said earlier in this thread. If you are experiencing the slowdowns described in this thread, please contact Autodesk Support.

Support will ask that you provide the project file and a journal of a session when the slowdown occurred. If you can reproduce it, please start a new session of Revit, reproduce the problem, and close Revit. This will create a journal for just this problem and will help narrow it down.

If you are not a Subscription customer, please send me a private message and I will work with you to get your data to Development.

Thanks for you patience while we work to resolve the problem.

patricks

2008-04-21, 08:18 PM

Good to know you guys are working on it... I guess it doesn't look that great when an update has to go out so soon after the initial release, but if one does go out that can alleviate the problems many have had (although I still haven't had much of any problem except 1 isolated crash incident) then I think many people will be much happier.

MRV

2008-04-21, 08:50 PM

Jim Merritt

2008-04-22, 02:09 PM

We are not having any performance issues with our Nvidia cards running on Vista. The time to open files is a few seconds longer, but everything else seems fine.
--Jim

Mike_Maloney

2008-04-22, 02:51 PM

I just wish I had my Copy.STILL haven't recieved it yet. Anyway, even if it does come soon, after ready all this I may just hold off. I have a Dell M90 with a Quadro 2500m/512 Card...........Doesn't bode well at the moment.

cipa11

2008-04-22, 02:54 PM

-on quadro FX 4600 works fine (...slower than revit 9.1 that was great)
-on FireGL 3400 works fine but slower than fx 4600 where it started to do model reduction on pan/orbit
- and hey! on Dell XPS 140 laptop with integrated VGA and shared mem still works fine! but the model reduction is drastic (you can see only the floors, ground and few other small things). In 2D you still have most of the elements on a dimensioned plan.

So, I'm thinking, (for factory!) that the problem is located where the software decide how many objects to show on the screen when pan/orbit/zoom-ing, based on the graphic power that revit see on your system.

By the way, I've oppened a large file (medium size stadium) and few others with shading & shadows and RivaTuner didn't count more than 67 Mb of Video RAM used including PhShop open with a large file in the same time....interesting!!! on both FX 4600 and FG 3400...
So, the speed counts! not the size...in this case.
Reed the specs of both cards to understand.
No crash-es yet.

gwnelson

2008-04-22, 03:06 PM

The blackout over plan areas problem that I was having yesterday has disappeared. I did close the program last night & restart it this AM.

BTW - I filed a support request and got:

(Factory) Is Open GL enabled?

(Me) Yes.

(Factory, hours later) Try toggling Open GL on/off.

barry.124831

2008-04-22, 11:20 PM

I just updated my driver for my graphics card and found that the issues i had yesterday no longer exist. I am using the ATI FireGL V3300 card with latest driver installed. The only issue is 2008 doesn't like it, esp schedules and it kind of freaks out when switching between views on different screens. Will continue to monitor and report back any new issues i find if any.
In response to the zooming using the mouse wheel, the new driver sorted out this problem.

Wes Macaulay

2008-04-23, 03:37 PM

We also have ATI's drivers from December 2007 and they have NOT sorted out the mousewheel problem -- it's still half the speed (i.e. framerate) that it was under 2008. This means that you roll the wheel and see nothing while you're zooming -- everything just disappears until half a second after you stop rolling the wheel.

They HAVE to fix this.

2008-04-23, 03:41 PM

Ah, so that is the same for everyone - thought maybe it was just me, thanks.

I have reverted for the time being to Ctrl+Middle mouse button which is much smoother.

ilya.bass

2008-04-24, 02:47 PM

I would like to know as well. If you look in the Revit 2009 Program directory, you'll see GrphDX9.dll and GrphOpenGL.dll files which seem to indicate that Autodesk is trying to support both (which would be awesome) or is migrating to DirectX for reasons I'd like to understand better.

So yes, Ilya, if you can divulge this, then the masses will know and understand.

Just so you all know -- the release version is faster than the final beta version, at least here on our FireGL-equipped machines using the latest drivers.

When you enable hardware acceleration (Options dialog, Graphics tab), the text states "Use OpenGL Hardware Acceleration". Whatever binary components happen to be installed, Open GL is what Revit supports and that has not changed from R2008. There is no DirectX support in Release 2009.

andyw.167227

2008-04-24, 02:48 PM

Hey Everyone......I work for a Design/Build firm that has grown quickly and we are trying to decide whether to purchase Revit 2008 or 2009. Any thought??? We currently use sketchup and are unhappy with its rendering capabilities.

Wes Macaulay

2008-04-24, 03:33 PM

When you enable hardware acceleration (Options dialog, Graphics tab), the text states "Use OpenGL Hardware Acceleration". Whatever binary components happen to be installed, Open GL is what Revit supports and that has not changed from R2008. There is no DirectX support in Release 2009.
Ilya -- thanks for the clarification!

:beer:

cipa11

2008-04-24, 03:55 PM

sorry, I just canot get used with that wheel....sorry... is not my style... and is the first time I see this in a software (Maya. Max has sort of a menu...but works); maybe I'm gettin' old; is worst than working with Mouse Trails activated (CTRL PANEL->Mouse->Pointer Options-> display pointer trails (mouse ghost)) especialy in graphic app..
I don't have time for fancy interface. In graphic applications the interface has to be instantaneous. INSTANTANEOUS! (like acad-without that smuth zoom effects).
In our profession the clients wants everything to be done YESTERDAY not like in medical area for instance, where just the earlyest appointment is in 3 months from now and after that you have to wait in line for about an hour. So, you can die by then few times...
And, i couldn't get rid of it in options menu. Only the cube can be turned off.
Maybe this new graphic layer of fancy wheel/cube just ad more latency to the interface that was acceptable before, not fine! as ACAD or others...
Please, we need an instantaneous tool. Only in this way we can deal with workarounds or features that are not developed yet (ex: site curbs) that needs many clicks/second in order to accomplish that specific task.
So, the main focus I think, has to be on direct colaboration with nVidia/ATI to make compatible drivers for your interface or,

just to rewrite the entire interface and to make it similar to other app. that works just fine (..they are many on Autodesk portfolio).
We will learn that interface quicker than mess-up with graphic card settings, workarounds, waiting 2-3 sec. for every zoom...

Anyway I appreciate ALOT the 2009 version with all the goods and not the bads that hopefuly will be taken in consideration. The project mirror is amasing even thart is not perfect and many others.
About the Rendering...is pure Autodesk sales management result...typical.

sfaust

2008-04-25, 11:49 PM

So I have kind of stayed out of the performance thing but I had to throw my experience in...

When using 2009 (both beta and release) I notice a slight slowdown, but not drastic by any means like others were reporting. So I worked away and didn't worry about it. However, I had a few extra minutes and thought I'd make sure my drivers were up to date. They weren't, so I installed the latest, and now it moves smooth as butter. Okay, refrigerated butter, it still takes a couple seconds to generate shadows, but it runs very smoothly. Noticably better than it was before the driver update.

I have an NVidia QuadroFX 3500 and I downloaded the performance driver (169.61). So I would recommend (as has been stated here) that everyone make sure thir drivers are up to date, especially with that card...

edit: this is with OpenGL acceleration on in Revit. It's about the same as pre-update with it off. Also, pre-highlighting and everything else seems faster as well.

Bill McLees

2008-04-27, 09:25 PM

cipa11

2008-04-28, 02:56 PM

I recently watched the webcast of Shane Griffith (DV300-2) relative to 3DS Max 2008. This is available on the AU2007 site.

Anyway, he made it clear that future Max development would support DirectX only and that no further development would be done for OpenGL. Though Revit doesn't support DirectX now, I would expect that to change next year if not before.

Bill

hey! that's the best news I've heard in many years!
Finaly, we'll be able to use cheap and powerfull graphic cards (directX ones).

I've been asking my self "why we architects canot benefit from gamyng alike softwares/interfaces?"

yeh! theyr texture resolutions are lower but Hey!!! theya are walking tru the 3D model like no workstation on earth.

So, that's what I want to show to my client what happends in my propose like a gamer!

Thanks in advance FACTORY!

aaronrumple

2008-04-28, 03:39 PM

patricks

2008-04-28, 05:26 PM

Is there no other option for walking through a 3D Persepctive view than to use that wheel thingy? I personally liked being able to just hold different keys with one hand and moving the mouse with the other hand.

And is it just me, or does the Walk function seem to be fairly slow walking forwards or backwards? Walking in a 3D view used to go faster the farther you moved the mouse up the screen, but there doesn't seem to be much difference when I move the mouse up the screen in this version. I have the Speed Factor for Walk maxed out at 10, but it still seems sorta slow.

hand471037

2008-04-28, 05:54 PM

The DirectX news isn't very welcome to those of us running Revit on VMs. DirectX 9 support is spotty currently. I can't get any DX9 application to yet run on Parallels, for example. So no MOI, Alibre, InventorLT, or Impression even unless I switch over to Boot Camp.

It's going to pretty much kill using Revit on a Mac. Not that it's a huge deal to most, for we're very much a (unsupported) minority. But I do know that I'll honestly be looking more at other solutions that are more VM or Mac friendly in the future if Revit goes DirectX only.

Autodesk has really decided to hitch it's wagon onto Microsoft's. Which, honestly, is probably not the wrong decision for them in the short term. However, some of Autodesk's competition, such as Solidworks, Rhino, and others are making more Mac-friendly products, and it's hard as a mostly Mac shop to not pay attention to that fact.

Wes Macaulay

2008-05-03, 10:39 PM

mruehr

2008-05-05, 12:21 AM

All this nattering about how great DirectX is seems to put aside the fact that at some point developing on MS might just become untenable. I wonder how quickly DX changes versus OpenGL... and I wonder how a gamer's platform would be better for the CAD community than a platform purpose-built for professionals.

Money
The Market for Games is Huge the demands for more and better is Huge
the technology follows where the cash is.

the most sophisticated kitchen technology are Coffee machines not because they are more important than dishwashers ,because of the Money made with them

cipa11

2008-05-05, 06:36 PM

yes, openGL rocks! but still I'd like to pan/zoom/walk-thru like you do in gaming (including textures, lights, EFX's...) with a 5 years old 10$ graphic card...who care about GL-X-pix?
Please help us!
Yeah, our model is not a "low poly"! so, make it! whan I'm in zooming/panning. The heavyeast plan/3d that you can find in the bigest revit file will use only 60-70 Mb VRAM !!!!! they are simple calculated vectors!! like in ACAD (3d/2d) for instance.

convince yourself:
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about8247.html
http://www.pureoverclock.com/article33.html

and yes, about GL Direct3D battle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenGL_and_Direct3D

...what can i say?...

gwnelson

2008-05-06, 07:12 PM

I turned Open GL back on after trying to work without it (at the suggestion of Support) because everything has been painfully slow. But OGL just immediately turns everything in a view to solid black.

I guess that I'm not happy without it because of the speed nor am I happy with it. Is anything cooking to resolve this issue? And yes, my drivers are like a week old, Quadro FX1400.

I could sit here and type for the foreseeable future as I'm PDF-ing several 11x17 shaded views. maybe 15 minutes each.

hand471037

2008-05-07, 12:55 AM

And yes, my drivers are like a week old, Quadro FX1400.

I've experienced problems in the past with nVidia cards from OEM's and drivers. As in, just because your Dell uses an nVidia card, if you use the generic drivers from nVidia and not the Dell versions of those drivers you can run into issues. It's more common with Laptops and such, but I've certainly seen it from desktops from, well, Dell, and other folks who make their own versions of the graphics cards that just use the same chipsets as the off-the-shelf boxed versions. Just because it's an nVidia card doesn't mean that it's going to use the drivers directly from them.

Not thinking that you don't know this, are aren't using the right driver and all that, but lots of folks here are having trouble with their drivers and so I thought I'd take the time to point this out when you brought it up. I just upgraded a Quadro-based system to RAC2009, and with the latest driver it's working great, even across four monitors. But the card in that machine is direct from nVidia, and wasn't put in there by an OEM...

iru69

2008-05-07, 02:26 AM

MRV

2008-05-07, 02:32 AM

But OGL just immediately turns everything in a view to solid black.

I have the same problems. Told support about you also having the same issue, they told me you rebooted and your problems went away... Also have a problem with views or sheets randomly not displaying..., they told me it was memory errors, but after running Memtest 86 all weekend without a single error, I think its got to be Opengl programming errors (driver or Revit???). Nvidia Quadro FX1500.

Richard McCarthy

2008-05-07, 03:03 AM

Revit ALWAYS had OpenGL problem, its been like this since FOREVER!

Honestly, I havn't seen a program that have so many problems with OpenGL for SO MANY YEARS !!. Revit is the ONLY program I have seen that have such limited OpenGL hardware support considering OpenGL is fairly tolerant and open platform and should run in every graphic hardware imaginable.

Let's not forget even with the approved OpenGL hardware you will still get problem with it.

I really hope Revit team just dump their graphic engine all together (or whoever is coding it haha) and get 3DS MAX team to code the graphic engine for them seeing they don't seem to bother to update it all these years. I really like to see full DirectX support, a better support for OpenGL (not this lame excuse - "YOU NEED FULL OPENGL HW, WE SUPPORT ONLY FULL OPENGL SET". 3DS MAX never had problem with OpenGL as far as I know, nor any major graphics programs).

patricks

2008-05-07, 12:20 PM

This is NOT an Nvidia/ATI problem. This is a REVIT problem.

Autodesk either doesn't know how to fix Revit, or for whatever logistical reason, can't fix Revit.

I'm praying they're close to some kind of fix to get it at least working as well (badly?) as it did in 2008.

How have you come to those conclusions?

Revit ALWAYS had OpenGL problem, its been like this since FOREVER!

Honestly, I havn't seen a program that have so many problems with OpenGL for SO MANY YEARS !!. Revit is the ONLY program I have seen that have such limited OpenGL hardware support considering OpenGL is fairly tolerant and open platform and should run in every graphic hardware imaginable.

Let's not forget even with the approved OpenGL hardware you will still get problem with it.

I really hope Revit team just dump their graphic engine all together (or whoever is coding it haha) and get 3DS MAX team to code the graphic engine for them seeing they don't seem to bother to update it all these years. I really like to see full DirectX support, a better support for OpenGL (not this lame excuse - "YOU NEED FULL OPENGL HW, WE SUPPORT ONLY FULL OPENGL SET". 3DS MAX never had problem with OpenGL as far as I know, nor any major graphics programs).

In my 4+ years of using Revit, I have experienced a grand total of ONE instance where I had a problem zooming and crashing that was fixed by turning OpenGL off in Revit. That was last summer using Revit 2008. Aside from that, I have been running OpenGL turned on all the time, in all versions (including 2009), without issue.

And I'm currently running a Dell workstation with a factory-installed nVIDIA QuardoFX 550 128MB graphics card, to which I just updated the driver a couple of weeks ago with the 162.65 driver from the nVIDIA website, and still no issues.

My home machine that I built is running an FX540 card from PNY, original 2-year-old drivers, and no issues there, either, with 2009. Although I forgot to turn on OpenGL when I first installed 2009 on it this past weekend, so I haven't worked in it with OpenGL on yet.

gwnelson

2008-05-07, 12:48 PM

I never had a problem with OGL in 2008 or any prior version. Nor can I think of any problems that really hampered my working with Revit. So I won't dump on the developers generically for OGL. But in 2009 it is a crippling problem.

Where are the comments from the Factory on this issue?

Jeff chimes in now & again in various posts but it appears that we've got a real problem here that they will neither confirm, deny or offer that a fix is in progress. And how did this get through Beta?

PS - My graphics card is a PNY, so I'm right now downloading their driver. I'll try anything.

gwnelson

2008-05-07, 01:47 PM

I just finished installing the latest drivers from the PNY site (version number looks like the previous one on the Nvidia site) and after running 2009 without problems for about 15 minutes the graphic reverted back to black. Black to the point of turning the entire screen black. I'm guessing that the driver isn't the solution. Duh.

In line with this I have an auto-generated e/m from Adesk asking me to rate the quality of support response - where their solution was to turn OGL off, or on. Whatever.

How should I reply? The last time I had an issue and added a check on the "do you want a supervisor to contact you?" nobody ever did. That suggested the reality of these support responses just goes to a bin somewhere and it's a warm feel-good attempt at placating the subscriber. Pretty weak.

jeffh

2008-05-07, 01:56 PM

The last time I had an issue and added a check on the "do you want a supervisor to contact you?" nobody ever did. That suggested the reality of these support responses just goes to a bin somewhere and it's a warm feel-good attempt at placating the subscriber.

That should not happen. It may have slipped through the cracks for some reason, but they are NOT going into a bin somewhere. You have nothing to loose by placing the check mark in the box (if you want to talk with the support manager).

iru69

2008-05-07, 02:32 PM

Patricks, that's great and all that you've had such good fortune, but what's your point? I don't think anyone is claiming that every single user in the Revit universe is having issues. Let's even say that 75% of users have never had a video card related issue... that would still leave tens of thousands of users with video card related issues. Is that acceptable? (or maybe your point is that we should all just be accepting since you've entered 'Phase 6 - Zen of Revit'? :p)

However, I'm very confident that it's a small minority of users who have never had a video card related issue. Most users don't relate certain crashes to the video card. They just think Revit randomly crashes every once in a while when doing stuff. Most users probably don't even know there's a little check box to turn OpenGL HA on or what it does. And then there are all the little graphic glitches that don't necessary prevent users from working, they're just annoying.

Maybe you haven't been following the hardware forums for the last four years like I have, but there's been video card problems galore for years and years. Some people keep jumping in to defend Autodesk/the Factory, but at some point, you've got to stop blaming the hundred million video cards out there and start blaming the software developers. I use, and have used, a lot of hardware and software over the past twenty-plus years, and I've never run into software that has so many problems with such a wide variety of video cards (it's actually a stretch to think of any other commercial software that I've had video card related problems with). Do you think it's normal for users to constantly be comparing driver versions and cryptic video card settings in order to use software? Is it normal for a video card/driver to work fine in one version and not work fine in the next version?

How have you come to those conclusions?

In my 4+ years of using Revit, I have experienced a grand total of ONE instance where I had a problem zooming and crashing that was fixed by turning OpenGL off in Revit. That was last summer using Revit 2008. Aside from that, I have been running OpenGL turned on all the time, in all versions (including 2009), without issue...

patricks

2008-05-07, 04:06 PM

I really don't know the in's and out's of how drivers affect hardware and software. But I suppose if a piece of software is optimized to run on the current version of a particular hardware's driver, whereas the previous version of the software was optimized for an older driver version, then there could be issues when running the new software with the older driver.

I have been using computers and software for nearly 20 years myself, so it seems logical that there is the possibility of these issues related to hardware drivers.

rmejia

2008-05-07, 05:35 PM

I unfortunately fall under the problems with OpenGL club. I have tried several different graphics card, but it's kind of a lottery, since there is no official supported graphic card list. I struck jackpot with an ATI FireGL 3400, but it started giving me problems at some point too. With OpenGL activated I get black screens and windows must close errors. This has been going on for several years, so I think it's something beyond a driver issue. I have never had problems with other 3d applications like 3ds max, autocad, sketchup. The fact that Revit takes no advantage of the video card to me indicates an underdeveloped graphics system. If using a 100$ vs a 2,500$ card makes no difference, there is definitely an area for improvement in the graphics department.

patricks

2008-05-07, 05:58 PM

iru69

2008-05-07, 06:19 PM

I think this is another place where users get a little mixed up. There's very little architectural difference between the those $2,000 cards and $200 cards... certainly not enough to warrant a $2,000 card being of any significant benefit in architectural CAD. The huge cost difference is in the "support", not in the hardware. Maybe if you're Pixar or Boeing, that's reason enough, but it shouldn't ever be necessary for an application like Revit, no matter how sophisticated the graphic subsystem becomes.

The fact that Revit takes no advantage of the video card to me indicates an underdeveloped graphics system. If using a 100$ vs a 2,500$ card makes no difference, there is definitely an area for improvement in the graphics department.

iru69

2008-05-07, 06:44 PM

A couple more things:

One, I'm pretty sure I've brought this up before, but the commonality I've noticed most so far is that ATI cards are suffering from the super slow performance in zooming, panning, orbiting, etc. and that NVIDIA cards are suffering from the "all black" plans and occasional crashes, but generally seem to be having less problems than ATI cards (which is historically the reverse).

Second, 2009 removed the "Overlay Planes" option which while it never appeared to have any noticable "performance" benefits, it was often necessary for getting a video card to work with Revit. Some cards liked it on and some cards liked it off. Is it possible that whatever changed with the functionality upon its removal is at least partially responsible for these problems?

rmejia

2008-05-07, 07:13 PM

From what I remember I've tested on an NVIDIA Quadro FX 1100, nVidia Quadro FX 550, NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS, some Radeon cards & the ATI FireGL 3400 (which I bought because of good feedback in an AUGI thread). I've used Windows XP, XP64 and currently on Vista 64. The FireGL 3400 had the best performance back in Revit 2008, but after the last service pack, it started to fail with OpenGL, the files would not even open, the screen would be blank with lines running across. So far on Revit 2009 the FireGL on another computer here has been working properly, but the GeForce 8800 on my pc does not work with OpenGL (didn't work before either, it was a risk I took, knowing from others that GeForce didn't work well with Revit OpenGL, but it works great with 3dsMax which I needed).

As far as the differences between $100 cards and $3,000 cards
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_11761.html
There is some difference in the 3D Primitive Performance, the triangles per second. In a program like 3ds Max a $100 card will not have anywhere near the same viewport performance as a $3,000 card, but that's as far as it goes, viewport performance. The ability to rotate a 3d model and not have to use adaptive degradation to simplify it into rectangles when rotating or moving it around due to crummy viewport performance. The ability to handle greater number of polys in the viewport with faster regenerations. 3ds Max objects tend to have a very high polygon count to make the meshes smooth, and objects like trees with hundreds or millions of leaves produce millions of polys in the scene.

Revit doesn't really need all this, at least at this point in time (2009) maybe in 10 years it will :) as people keep demanding more out of 3d programs. Although this would be if people start putting furniture, trees and people that are actual 3d models, not 2d billboards or rectangular furniture :).

Anyhow... back to the point. All I ask for is to be able to turn on shadows. Withought OpenGL it brings Revit to a grinding halt. I much rather use a $100 gaming card than any expensive card. I would settle for a direct answer from the factory like:
We recommend the following graphic cards for OpenGL
- ATI FireGL 3400
- Nvidia #######

From the Revit 2009 specifications:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8479263
Dedicated video card with hardware support for OpenGL spec 1.3 or later

My card supports spec 1.3 or later ... yet ... it does not work......
NVIDIA 8800GTS
* Complete DirectX support, including Microsoft DirectX 10 Shader Model 4.0
* Full OpenGL® support, including OpenGL 2.0

rjcrowther

2008-05-08, 01:56 PM

I wonder if this going to become an anuual event.

I vividly recall last years release creating video card issues for some.

We now have the same this year.

I wonder what next year holds.

gwnelson

2008-05-08, 02:05 PM

The "doesn't work? try turning off OpenGL" answer is disappointing and frustrating. I understand they have to cover their a**es and it is a liability to provide specific info, it is better to be ambiguous about issues. The less info the better for the lawyers; "doesn't work? we never actually said it would, we said it "might" work, better luck next time" type of thought. I just don't like guessing what works and what doesn't too much.

What if the solution was to set the resolution to 800x600 & 8 bit color? Not really much different in approach.

guy.messick825831

2008-05-08, 04:19 PM

OK, wading back in....

We have had to upgrade all systems to 2009, primarily due to our consultants moving right away. The graphics performance issue has been most noticable on our Dell M90 mobile workstations with FX1500M cards, where we have to turn off OpenGL to get it to work at all. (There is degraded performance on all systems, all drivers are up to date and from Dell, as are all of our systems) Maybe I'm too sensitive.

That said, two bright lights are shining through:

1. We are rolling out new quad core systems with FX570 cards, and they rock hard. The FX570 is quite reasonable.
2. I received a note from our vendor that reads in part: "Revit development team is still running tests to deal with the performance regression from 2008-2009 and that upon discovery of some sort of fix they will get back to us."

So far the Factory has been quite good at fixes, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt, and get back to work

rmejia

2008-05-08, 06:37 PM

Another thing about OpenGL statistics, as far as how many users are affected, is that if OpenGL does not work... it will not crash Revit. Screens go black, windows get closed, but Revit keeps rolling. So there will be no crash report submitted. Apart from people mentioning their compatibility issues here on AUGI, or maybe sending emails to autodesk, I do not know how the factory would be aware that their might be a lot or a few users out there who can or cannot activate OpenGL. :?

iru69

2008-05-08, 06:50 PM

That's within the Quadro family. The general reference to $200 cards versus $2,000 cards that I assumed you were referring to is the $200 "gaming" card (e.g. GF8800GTS) versus the $2,000 "CAD" card (e.g. Quadro FX4600). Both have ~65GB memory bandwidth and do about 24 billion Texels per Second/Fill Rate.

As far as the differences between $100 cards and $3,000 cards
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_11761.html

Scott D Davis

2008-05-08, 07:40 PM

I do not know how the factory would be aware that their might be a lot or a few users out there who can or cannot activate OpenGL. :?

File Support Requests!!! When you file a Support Request, the "ticket" gets filed into a database, and the issues with the same problems can be queried. Only by filing SRs can the Factory get a handle on how many people are having the issue, and what the issues might be for the large variety of users, machines, specs, etc.

If you don't file SR's, they have no idea that you have a problem.

hand471037

2008-05-08, 07:56 PM

I wonder if this going to become an anuual event.

Most likely.

I vividly recall last years release creating video card issues for some.

I remember when I worked for a reseller that the majority of phone support issues with 3D Studio Max and Inventor, which both make heavy use of the video hardware, were problems due to graphic cards and/or drivers.

We now have the same this year.

And it's likely to happen again. What I'd like to see is the support from the Graphic Card makers themselves, as well as better support from Autodesk. Currently I can go and buy a card that's rated for use with Max, or Inventor, or even AutoCAD, where they have been tested and even have special default driver settings for those products. Currently I have yet to see a 'Revit' preset...

I wonder what next year holds.

Most likely more of the same. The more Revit uses the video card hardware acceleration, the more problems people out there are likely to experience from it.

Everyone complained for years that Revit didn't make enough use of the video hardware, and now that it is (and we're seeing the problems therein) everyone is complaining about Revit's use of the video hardware.

While I do feel that Autodesk needs to address this issue, the shrillness and anger from some users being expressed here on AUGI is a direct effect on my, and I feel likely many others, desire to participate in any way.

rmejia

2008-05-08, 08:57 PM

Well I filed a Support Request! Unfortunately the link from within Revit is not working, it says that it can't find Internet Explorer; maybe it's because I have Firefox set as the default. Anyhow I was able to do it through the subscription center.

Wes Macaulay

2008-05-08, 09:26 PM

You're spot-on, Jeffrey. Hardware vendors test their hardware and drivers on games all the time -- it's the developers who have to go by the book and the vendors have to tweak their drivers. Autodesk has get some headspace at ATI and nVidia. The Factory is going to need counseling after all this grumpiness: "It's not your fault, guys..." LOL

Revit 2008 was twice as fast as 9.1 in display performance, and while Revit may not be as fast as Max or Inventor (why, I don't know), it's miles faster than AutoCAD.

jtf_8

2008-05-08, 10:53 PM

This is what I was told today.

"Dear John,

Revit Product Management has made me aware of a performance regression in Revit 2009 products from 2008 for 3D views where the view will appear slower then before.

The underlying issue for this case is being addressed by our development team on a future release.

I am going to place this Support Request in a status called 'Pending Change Request.' It will not be closed and you will be notified when the enhancement has been implemented."

Best Regards,

Don Falkowski
Autodesk Support Team

rjcrowther

2008-05-09, 12:12 AM

Everyone complained for years that Revit didn't make enough use of the video hardware, and now that it is (and we're seeing the problems therein) everyone is complaining about Revit's use of the video hardware.

While I do feel that Autodesk needs to address this issue, the shrillness and anger from some users being expressed here on AUGI is a direct effect on my, and I feel likely many others, desire to participate in any way.

If the complaints have been thick and fast on poor utilization of video hardware then it is good ADesk has responded. I also agree shrillness and anger becomes tiresome.

If video card problems are the way of the future and the development team can and does simulate various configurations, it might be handy if we were privy to those combinations that do and do not work. Of course if my setup was nominated as one that was not going to work I would reserve the right to be shrill and angry but at least I would know a solution after I got over my 10 minutes of gloom.

I don't know if listing these combinations is feasible. It seems at the present time it is not. I wish it was. :(

Also, I am not sure if it is feasible to correspondingly implement a 'Shrill and Anger' section here at AUGI that is ready to go for the next release.:)

Thanks,
Rob

iru69

2008-05-09, 12:14 AM

I know I'm talking to the wind here, but this starts and ends with Autodesk. Nvidia and ATI are maybe somewhere in the middle.

Autodesk is responsible for certifying drivers for use with their software. ATI and Nvidia do work with Autodesk to some extent, and suggest they do some in-house testing, but again, Autodesk is responsible for providing them with the resources to do that. With partnership agreements (which Autodesk has with both ATI & Nvidia), ATI and Nvidia will typically provide hardware and driver updates as they become available. Like all software, ATI and Nvidia drivers are not perfect, but ultimately it's up to Autodesk to work around that if ATI and Nvidia are unable or unwilling to fix something. Ultimately, it's up to Autodesk to insure compatibility with the hardware and drivers, not Nvidia or ATI. It may not always be easy, but every other major player out there seems to be making it work with much greater success than Revit.

It should be noted that just about all the major Autodesk products (AutoCAD, Inventor, Maya, Max) have driver certification to various degrees... Revit is absent. Combine that with a failure rate on at least some level with every video card I've ever used with Revit (going on a dozen of every stripe and color), and the only logical conclusion is that there is something fundamentally flawed with Revit's graphic subsystem (as it relates to OpenGL). This is conjecture, but I'd suggest they are unable to certify drivers for Revit because Revit's graphic subsystem is broken.

As we understand it, Autodesk is working to fix the immediate problems. We can only hope that they have a plan that's close to implementation for fixing the glaring on-going long-term problem (whether that means canning the current OpenGL implementation team, or canning OpenGL in favor of DX10, or whatever). Turning OpenGL off is not a "solution". Buying a new video card every release is not a "solution".

Everyone complained for years that Revit didn't make enough use of the video hardware, and now that it is (and we're seeing the problems therein) everyone is complaining about Revit's use of the video hardware.
I'm not sure I'm following... Are you referring to "shadows" which they added in 7.0? I'd say they've had the last six versions to figure that out.

While I do feel that Autodesk needs to address this issue, the shrillness and anger from some users being expressed here on AUGI is a direct effect on my, and I feel likely many others, desire to participate in any way.
I'd say this has been a fairly level-headed and reasoned response to a situation that is leaving many users either unable to upgrade to 2009 or regretting they did. If anything, I'm a bit surprised the **** really hasn't hit the fan yet. What's really starting to turn me off is the griping about the griping.

Andre Baros

2008-05-09, 12:35 AM

Out of curiousity, how are people measuring the change in performance from 2008 to 2009? I see numbers like 30% slower and 50% slower being tossed around... how are you testing? I'm not saying that there is or isn't a problem, I haven't noticed anything different, but I'm curious how you test for this. Incidentally, we did have one nvidia machine with old drivers which crashed every few minutes and updating the video drivers completely solved the problem. In Max, most of my crashes are video card driver related... and much more frequent than in Revit.

From my understanding, OpenGL drivers are an open standard, and thus a constantly moving target whereas DirectX is Microsofts closed system so the standards are clearly spelled out. Card manufacturers can charge extra for their OpenGL cards because there is a lot of "value" in the drivers they provide whereas DirectX cards are a commodity because the drivers are all the same since DirectX doesn't leave room for manufacturers to tweak settings.

Richard McCarthy

2008-05-09, 12:40 AM

What I really dislike is Autodesk's official attitude in regard to OpenGL/HW acceleration. It almost always BLAMES THE USER FIRST. It has become such a mantra that now has become an accepted practice, even fanboys also holds these attitude.

REVIT's OPENGL IS BROKEN. It is at best HALF WORKING for the past few years I have been using it. I can guarantee majority of Revit users doesn't even know their Revit display is running on SOFTWARE ONLY. And this is 2008 we are talking about here, not 1995 or 1990... a HIGH END CAD program that still have spotty support for hardware accelerated graphics display is simply not acceptable. Even a $100 3D program have better (and majority of them) have far, FAR better support than Revit.

Richard McCarthy

2008-05-09, 01:06 AM

How have you come to those conclusions?

In my 4+ years of using Revit, I have experienced a grand total of ONE instance where I had a problem zooming and crashing that was fixed by turning OpenGL off in Revit. That was last summer using Revit 2008. Aside from that, I have been running OpenGL turned on all the time, in all versions (including 2009), without issue.

And I'm currently running a Dell workstation with a factory-installed nVIDIA QuardoFX 550 128MB graphics card, to which I just updated the driver a couple of weeks ago with the 162.65 driver from the nVIDIA website, and still no issues.

My home machine that I built is running an FX540 card from PNY, original 2-year-old drivers, and no issues there, either, with 2009. Although I forgot to turn on OpenGL when I first installed 2009 on it this past weekend, so I haven't worked in it with OpenGL on yet.

That only says you are incredibly lucky. I have worked in 3 large offices (50~100+ users) and one small office in the past few years. One of the office have the OpenGL turn off categorically because it has proven to be such an issue. The other 2 offices doesn't even know and are running software only all along.

Wes Macaulay

2008-05-09, 01:12 AM

Andre, our tests of Revit 2009 are mostly qualitative, thought I pulled out a stopwatch on a large project and waited 16s for a 3D regen over 9s for the same view in 2008 (shadows on, of course, with OGL enabled).

OGL is evolving, rather than being a moving target, and the Factory can use whatever spec of OGL they want, right up to 2.1, and most cards will support this. They're playing it safe by using the 1.3 specification, which is several years old. I've been reading more about OGL vs DX recently and there's no reason to believe that DX will save our bacon any more than OGL. Having found a manufacturer that at least had Revit on their radar (ATI) made us feel that we had been successful with getting Revit and OGL to work, so I can't back up Richard's statement that Revit and OGL are fatally flawed. However, given that apps like uStation and Inventor have switched over to DX and are running well are head-scratchers -- is there something about Revit that prevents them from fixing these video problems? We all blather about how we'd be willing to pay for a $750 card to make Revit spin the model faster, but Autodesk needs to develop for the tech morons out there who just need to make their laptop from BestBuy run the software. Forget ISV certification and all that.

But in our area, our local users (on XP primarily, but some are on Vista) are NOT having the problems with OpenGL I'm reading about on this thread. Revit and OpenGL are working great here, and have been in every release since I started using Revit. Though 2009 is slower than 2008 -- it's like 9.1, which as you recall was half as fast as 2008. Sometimes you have to switch a setting on your video card (such as Vertical Sync on nVidia cards), but that's common in the gaming community. I still wish it was 100% foolproof, but that's an unrealistic expectation. It may be time for the Factory to say, use the FireGL and Quadro cards by these manufacturers, we'll test them on every release and you'll be golden. But nVidia has all but ignored Revit up till now, and I have no idea if ATI is staying current with Revit, either.

I much doubt that the brilliance of the programming at the Factory has a huge gap with respect to the video system in Revit. If there is a flaw, it may have something to do with how quickly Revit's parametric change engine can even put data up onto the screen or something like that -- there may be an underlying bottleneck that we don't understand. Given that Revit's 3D video display is far faster than Sketchup or AutoCAD makes me less willing to complain about Revit's video performance.

iru69

2008-05-09, 01:13 AM

The slowness, at least as I've experienced it, is glacial. It's like you start to zoom in and nothing happens for a few seconds, and then all of a sudden you're zoomed in way too far. I'd describe it as more of a lag, like trying to steer a ship. It's not a benchmark kind of thing. It's like something isn't working right. You definitely know it when you see it... I would think even someone who had never used Revit before would know something was wrong.

OpenGL is a specification. There are a number of big players involved - Apple, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc. Khronos appears to be the gate keeper. The specification is finalized and the video card makers are suppose to follow the specification. They're up to spec 2.1 or something like that. Someone once pointed to some autodesk web page indicating that Revit 2008 was using the 1.5 spec IIRC (which has been around for like five years). The spec is not a moving target. Wikipedia OpenGL. What is fair to say is that the drivers can be a moving target. The driver support for OpenGL can vary from release to release. However, it's rarely a widely moving target (especially with the CAD cards)... the ins and out of ATI and Nvidia's drivers are well known by the OpenGL developer community.

DX is really no different then OpenGL in that regard. Nvidia and ATI follow the DX spec as closely as they can. I don't know anything about DX certification or the like, but in the end, it's basically the same deal, there are going to be bugs in the drivers, and as they come to light, they're either fixed or the software developers work around them. Nvidia and ATI do not generally test games... the game developers do. It would be fair to say that when it comes to gaming cards, Nvidia and ATI spend a lot more time making sure the DX is up to spec then they spend making sure the OpenGL is up to spec.

Gaming cards and CAD cards support OpenGL on a hardware level are relatively equally. Just about all the modern video cards have hardware support for OpenGL (at least 2.0 for the last few years). The difference is in the driver support. The drivers for CAD cards are specifically developed with OpenGL in mind (since so many CAD apps use OpenGL), where as it can be a bit more hit and miss with the gaming cards. Theoretically, gaming cards should work great with any OpenGL app, and they often do. But application developers have to decide what the lowest common denominator they want to use when implementing OpenGL in their software since they're going to have to work around those ins and outs. Some developers write off the gaming card market and others don't (depending on their target market).

Out of curiousity, how are people measuring the change in performance from 2008 to 2009? I see numbers like 30% slower and 50% slower being tossed around... how are you testing? I'm not saying that there is or isn't a problem, I haven't noticed anything different, but I'm curious how you test for this. Incidentally, we did have one nvidia machine with old drivers which crashed every few minutes and updating the video drivers completely solved the problem. In Max, most of my crashes are video card driver related... and much more frequent than in Revit.

From my understanding, OpenGL drivers are an open standard, and thus a constantly moving target whereas DirectX is Microsofts closed system so the standards are clearly spelled out. Card manufacturers can charge extra for their OpenGL cards because there is a lot of "value" in the drivers they provide whereas DirectX cards are a commodity because the drivers are all the same since DirectX doesn't leave room for manufacturers to tweak settings.

Wes Macaulay

2008-05-09, 01:17 AM

Chad Smith

2008-05-09, 01:19 AM

What I really dislike is Autodesk's official attitude in regard to OpenGL/HW acceleration. It almost always BLAMES THE USER FIRST.
I've been down this path with Support before, and really the only outcome/suggestion that they can give is to update your video driver.

Once, I even had acceleration working reasonably well in one version, and then completely broke in the next, all without changing a single thing on my PC. Autodesk could not digest the fact that the problem had to lay with them because I hadn't done a single thing except install a new version.

iru69

2008-05-09, 01:35 AM

The appeal of DX is that the DX market is so massively huge, driver support for DX is going to be more consistent because that's where Nvidia and ATI focus in on. It should also be noted that it doesn't have to be a one or the other solution. The developers could have both DX and OpenGL graphic subsystems in Revit just like many other applications do.

I've been reading more about OGL vs DX recently and there's no reason to believe that DX will save our bacon any more than OGL.

Richard McCarthy

2008-05-09, 01:38 AM

Iru, if game developers test the games, do they fiddle with all the settings in the drivers and then send that back to the hardware people so those settings can be incorporated into the drivers that get shipped?

As far as 2009 goes, the wheelmouse zoom rate is pretty bad. It's better than the beta, but it's way worse than 2008.

Wesley, as far as I understand OpenGL is an open standard, if I remember correctly, OGL extension (manufacturer specific) doesn't come into effect until v2.0. That means all manufacturer must conform to the standard (prior to 1.3). And in all these years I have use CAD/3D programs, I have encounter countless DirectX problems (DX3 ~ DX10), but ZERO OpenGL problem except on Revit. OpenGL is a HIGH LEVEL API and a rock solid standard used by industry because of the ease of programming and wide compatibility with variety of platform and hardware. By comparison, DirectX is a low level API that gives more flexibility and direct access to hardware, and especially because of this... more incompatibilities and conflicts.

iru69

2008-05-09, 02:10 AM

Generally, yes. I don't know what the exact process of getting that little setting into a driver is, but the responsibility of figuring out what the driver settings are is up to the game developer - it's very much dependent on what driver features they implemented into the game. The game developers develop to a certain available specification of their choosing. The default driver settings are set to insure the greatest compatibility with what's out there. For some games, that may mean disabling certain driver features. But probably most often, those settings are insuring that new driver features that are turned off by default are enabled to offer the best gaming experience. Most of those games are compatible with the default settings, you just won't get the most out of the graphics.

However, just like above, I used the word "generally" in my previous post because nVidia and ATI obviously have relationships with the big gaming firms (just like they do with Autodesk), and there's no doubt that nVidia and ATI test a selection of popular games all the time for their own purposes to test hardware/driver performance. There's huge money in being able to claim you have the fastest card for Crysis, etc. But they're not testing games to ensure compatibility - ultimately that's up to the game developers.

Iru, if game developers test the games, do they fiddle with all the settings in the drivers and then send that back to the hardware people so those settings can be incorporated into the drivers that get shipped?

As far as 2009 goes, the wheelmouse zoom rate is pretty bad. It's better than the beta, but it's way worse than 2008.

dbaldacchino

2008-05-09, 03:49 AM

Out of curiousity, how are people measuring the change in performance from 2008 to 2009? I see numbers like 30% slower and 50% slower being tossed around... how are you testing?

I should have posted my tests here...take a look at THIS (http://forums.augi.com/showpost.php?p=837401) post. You can tell that zooming with the scroll button is quite bad in 2009. Quite peculiar is the fact that when using the steering wheel function, regeneration times are faster than using the middle mouse button.

Also, today I opened a large model (200MB) on a Dell Dual Core 2.66Mhz with 2GB of RAM (pretty much maxed out when the file was open) on RAC 2008. This PC has an ATI Radeon display, but I don't remember the exact specs. It is equipped with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, used to power the SmartBoard in our conference room. I was astounded at the smoothness and speed by which the display regenerates and moves. I've opened this model on various tower and laptop configurations and none move this smooth. In fact I thought that was just due to model size, but today I was perplexed. To add to the weirdness, if you go to Revit's Options dialog and click on the Graphics tab on this machine, the display goes away and you have to shut down completely and restart. Other software that uses OpenGL also causes this to happen, so it's not just Revit. The display card just quits sending a signal to the screen, but everything else still runs fine, but obviously you have to restart. Clearly this card does not support OpenGL, yet, it's the fastest I've ever seen Revit run. Go figure. I'll post the machine specs tomorrow.

Wes Macaulay

2008-05-09, 04:42 AM

Wesley, as far as I understand OpenGL is an open standard, if I remember correctly, OGL extension (manufacturer specific) doesn't come into effect until v2.0. That means all manufacturer must conform to the standard (prior to 1.3). And in all these years I have use CAD/3D programs, I have encounter countless DirectX problems (DX3 ~ DX10), but ZERO OpenGL problem except on Revit. OpenGL is a HIGH LEVEL API and a rock solid standard used by industry because of the ease of programming and wide compatibility with variety of platform and hardware. By comparison, DirectX is a low level API that gives more flexibility and direct access to hardware, and especially because of this... more incompatibilities and conflicts.
Hmm -- the more low level you are, the more streamlined your performance becomes. But Ugh, who wants to be in bed with MS on this front?

jtf_8

2008-05-09, 03:40 PM

Magic,

I had posted this yesterday,

"Dear John,

Revit Product Management has made me aware of a performance regression in Revit 2009 products from 2008 for 3D views where the view will appear slower then before.

The underlying issue for this case is being addressed by our development team on a future release.

I am going to place this Support Request in a status called 'Pending Change Request.' It will not be closed and you will be notified when the enhancement has been implemented."

In that service request I had mentioned that I had just finished adding 2GB of ram and a new ATI Radeon 9600PRO 256MB card, but was still experiancing lag time, the tech. who installed the card for me said he up-graded the card at the time of install, well I up-graded the 9600 series suite driver for this card today and it's magic, back to full speed in 2009.

This is working for all my files now, large, med, and small. This is even with shadows on in 3D model of a large file, I have OGL turned on....

Hope all works out for everyone.

dbaldacchino

2008-05-09, 04:06 PM

The machine I was talking about in my previous post is a Dell Optiplex 745 with an ATI Radeon X1300/X1550 series display. Once we get 2009 installed on it, I'll test again to see if the speed remains the same or if it slows down. I probably will not be able to enable OpenGL though.

gwnelson

2008-05-09, 04:14 PM

My laptop is a Dell M90 w/ Quadro FX2500 Nvidia card, latest drivers. It runs Open GL ok & I don't see much reduction in speed.

Too bad I do most of my work with the big box, Quadro FX1400. Performance is mediocre, at best. Open GL is off.

cipa11

2008-05-09, 07:39 PM

I'm little concerned about the errors # in this release (see the general page on last 2 weeks) and it reminds me what happend with Archicad back on release 8 when it was the same situation and they had to rewrite the whole code and than the next versions went ok. But, surprise!!!!! see this:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=117868

dig deeper in their forum maybe you'll find more interesting things.
I'm bussy now. At least Autodesk has ACAD that can be a bankup.

http://discussion.bentley.com/cgi-bin/dnewsweb.exe?cmd=xover&group=bentley.microstation.v8xm.general&from=&utag=&sub=y

3d is not ready for architects yet... we have too much information to handle for a piece of silicon + a binary code....
and yes!, what about Microsoft ME?!!!!!!!
Vista seems to be not far...

something happend with all this softwares (maybe!)

Interesting that mechanical engineers can do entire cars/planes in 3d and 2d and typicaly they have curvy shapes and fillets.

somebody said on this forum that our models are more complex! I don't believe that.
I've been playing with Solid Works once on PIII and worked better than Revit on a complicated model on that time (no OGL card then...) Adsk Inventor the same! was ok.

I'm not updated now about them but I see better cars on the streets and not the same about architecture. Maybe they are related.

iru69

2008-05-12, 09:57 PM

Nvidia Quadro FX570 w/ OpenGL on (black plan).

ATI FireGL V3400 w/ OpenGL on (crazy mess).

Both supplied by Dell.

Also, similar problems with FX550 and ATI X1600 Mobility and GF8600... and every video card we have. It's impossible that this issue could be limited to a minority of Revit 2009 users (except for the hypothesis that most users don't even have OpenGL turned on in the first place).

I continue to experiment with different drivers but haven't found anything that definitely fixes the problem. Looking forward to SP1 very soon, I hope!

ron.sanpedro

2008-05-12, 11:15 PM

"It will not be closed and you will be notified when the enhancement has been implemented."

By that logic, when an contractor simply forgets to put a roof on the building, and comes back to get it right later, it is an 'enhancement'. Somehow I don't see that flying very well, you know?

Hey, Autodesk, you #@$%! broke it, now FIX it! This is NOT 'lacking' an 'enhancement', it is BROKEN, and YOU broke it, and you need to FIX it. The sentence above is just unbelievably offensive.

OK, rant mode OFF. But really, can Autodesk be that A: Clueless, or B: Callous? I sure hope not.

Gordon

rmejia

2008-05-12, 11:32 PM

I would send support requests over this to alert Autodesk of the problem and maybe help them sort it out. I sent in a support request about my OpenGL woes as Scott Davis suggested and got this response from support:

"Dear Robert,

Thank you for contacting Autodesk Support. I apologize this issue is occurring as I know it must be frustrating. Please open Revit, reproduce the issue, the close Revit.
Please then send me the latest journal file. they are located here:
C:\Program Files\Revit Architecture 2009Journals"

They have severity levels for support requests. To me this falls under:
"High - Business Impacted: Product issue impacts use of application or key components and no acceptable workaround exists."

Scott D Davis

2008-05-13, 01:42 PM

Question for those that are having video related issues: what mouse drivers are you using? I aks because I was having some display problems in Max yesterday. After some investigation with the M&E guys, it turns out it may be related to the Microsoft Intellimouse drivers. I haven't tried yet, but it was suggested I use a generic mouse driver and see if that helps my display in Max. The reasoning is that the MS Intellimouse "hijacks" some of the video display for the mouse trails and other on screen movements of the cursor.

Someone please test this in Revit and see if it helps, and report back here. Simply use a generic mouse driver instead of the Intellimouse drivers.

cipa11

2008-05-13, 03:26 PM

MRV

2008-05-13, 03:59 PM

Nvidia Quadro FX570 w/ OpenGL on (black plan).

ATI FireGL V3400 w/ OpenGL on (crazy mess).

Both supplied by Dell.

Also, similar problems with FX550 and ATI X1600 Mobility and GF8600... and every video card we have.

I hope you are turning in support requests for this stuff. I did for the "black areas" and was told that "we haven't heard from anyone else with this..."

People, if you have video problems, FILE THOSE SUPPORT REQUESTS so the development team can research what's causing this. Thanks.

Wes Macaulay

2008-05-13, 04:51 PM

I started using the Mobility Catalyst 8.x drivers lately for our Radeon-powered laptops and we're having no troubles. The FireGL's in our office are all ATI-branded as the computers are custom built to our specs; and they're working fine in all versions of Revit. I guess Iru's Dell computers may not have actual ATI-made cards? Iru, have you cracked your boxes yet to see if there's any identifying information on the video card?

dfriesen

2008-05-13, 05:23 PM

I just noticed that there's a new driver available for the ATI FireGL V3400, dated May 1. I'm downloading now, and crossing my fingers that it will help. If not, I'll be sure to file a support request outlining the current poor performance.

As to the mouse driver, I'm using the MS USB Wheel Mouse Optical driver that came with Win XP 64. I've also got headphones plugged in (with an extension cord) and no mouse pad. I'll try enhancing with a mouse pad, to see if that helps. ;)

jbdesign

2008-05-13, 05:28 PM

clip......Though 2009 is slower than 2008 -- it's like 9.1, which as you recall was half as fast as 2008. Sometimes you have to switch a setting on your video card (such as Vertical Sync on nVidia cards), but that's common in the gaming community.....clip

BINGO! Thank you Wes.

I don't get around here very often, but I have a Quadro FX1500 and have had problems with graphic artifacts and windows/files not refreshing properly with 2008 and OGL on. I installed the new graphics drive when I installed 2009 a couple weeks ago and had the same problem. Better with OGL off, but unacceptable shadow and 3d view speed. I read this thread the other day and thought that it must be a graphic card setting that was the problem. I dug around in the Nvidia control panel and switched the Vertical Sync setting to "Force on" and got back to work. It seems to have fixed the problem that I was having and working perfect now.

gwnelson

2008-05-13, 05:36 PM

I hope you are turning in support requests for this stuff. I did for the "black areas" and was told that "we haven't heard from anyone else with this..."

People, if you have video problems, FILE THOSE SUPPORT REQUESTS so the development team can research what's causing this. Thanks.

That's all just blowing sunshine. Here's support's response 3 weeks ago to my filing a request:
Yes, Open GL is enabled

----- Original Message ----- From: product.support.communications@autodesk.com
To: gwnelson@optonline.net
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 2:38 PM
Subject: SR# 1-3583804421 - Graphic errors

http://www.autodesk.com/images/ad_logo_email.gif Autodesk Subscription
Hi Glenn,

Are you using OpenGL Hardware Acceleration? It can be found under Options > Graphic tab.

Best Regards,

Jerome Harris
Autodesk Support Team
They told me to turn it off.

dfriesen

2008-05-13, 06:34 PM

I just noticed that there's a new driver available for the ATI FireGL V3400, dated May 1. I'm downloading now, and crossing my fingers that it will help. If not, I'll be sure to file a support request outlining the current poor performance.
Ok, that was weird - after installing the new driver (ver 8.453.1), OpenGL on results in half the elements in my model not showing up at all, in any view, 3d, plan, elevation, etc, shadows or no shadows. Not necesarily the same elements. Not just as I'm changing the view, but permanently! Wow, never seen anything that bad before!!

However, after turning OpenGL off (which still feels counter-intuitive to me), performance is a lot better than it was before this driver update. It still seems a bit slower than 2008, but it's the best I've seen in 2009. I think I'll stick with this setup for a bit, and see how it goes.

cdetore

2008-05-13, 07:01 PM

After getting a little frustrated about the performance I dug into the Nvidia display control panel. (This PC has an Nvidia Quadro FX so I don't know what the choices are in the ATI control panel.)

I made a new profile for Revit under the "Manage 3D settings > Program Settings" menu. I basically turned all the bells and whistles off (from auto-detect) and it seems to have made a difference. It's not exactly flying around but it much more in line with RAC 2008 performance, all with the hardware acceleration on. YMMV.

I figured that if the profile gets messed up I could just delete it. Just don't change the global settings! I have no idea what effect it would have on your other programs. Proceed with caution.

Hope this works for you as well

CD

EDIT: Just saw jbdesigns' post. Beat me to it. (I should refresh more often).

CD

2008-05-13, 07:48 PM

Similarly I've been playing around with the settings in the latest Ati driver (May 1st) for FireGLs (I use a V5600).

with the Catalyst Control Center installed in Advanced View...

FWIW I seem to get the smoothest OpenGL performance with the following setttings:

Anti-aliasing= Use application settings
Adaptive Anti-aliasing= Enable A A-A, set slider to Performance and Method to 'super-sampling'
Anisotropic Filtering= Use application settings
Catalyst AI= disable Catalyst AI
Mipmap detail Level= High Performance (slider all the way to the left)

The last one - Mipmap - seemed to make the most difference - inasmuch as you could notice :roll: ;)

The only display issue I am having is that when opening a project the first View does not always display unless 'Audit' is ticked when opening the project. Opening another View is OK, but the first View must be closed and re-opened to become visible.

Incidentally I see that the comm center lists 'hot topics' for Revit 2009 including reference to the issue of slowdown in 3D Views
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=11234662&linkID=9243099

dbaldacchino

2008-05-13, 08:28 PM

lol! Turn shadows off is a SOLUTION? I don't know what to think except if I was responsible for supporting a product, I'd refrain from "offering" these kinds of resolutions.

Wes Macaulay

2008-05-13, 09:50 PM

Ok, that was weird - after installing the new driver (ver 8.453.1), OpenGL on results in half the elements in my model not showing up at all, in any view, 3d, plan, elevation, etc, shadows or no shadows. Not necesarily the same elements. Not just as I'm changing the view, but permanently! Wow, never seen anything that bad before!!

However, after turning OpenGL off (which still feels counter-intuitive to me), performance is a lot better than it was before this driver update. It still seems a bit slower than 2008, but it's the best I've seen in 2009. I think I'll stick with this setup for a bit, and see how it goes.I may have a go at this driver myself, and I'll let you know what I come up with. It sounds like vertical synch needs to be off, just like nVidia cards require...

dfriesen

2008-05-13, 09:56 PM

I may have a go at this driver myself, and I'll let you know what I come up with. It sounds like vertical synch needs to be off, just like nVidia cards require...
It's doing the same thing in Revit 2008 as well. OpenGL causes half the model to disappear. I'm gonna have to reinstall the driver and Catalyst Control Center - can't get the control center to open.

iru69

2008-05-13, 10:37 PM

Thanks WS. Unfortunately, that's not fixing the problem, though it has changed the look of the problem somewhat. Now I'm getting white screens (everything disappears) for several seconds every time I pan or orbit or zoom.

It should be noted that I didn't see all the advanced options you have. I've got:
Anti-Aliasing
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing
Anistropic Filtering
Mitmap Detail Level

I don't see a "Method" or a "Catalyst AI".

Using the new FireGL drivers from May 1st.

Bring back overlay planes!

Scott D Davis

2008-05-14, 04:05 AM

Intellimouse driver problems with Max are a known issue according to Microsoft. So before everyone gets cynical and starts talking about unplugging headphones, you may actually want tot est and see if mouse drivers are causing your Revit slowdown. Its definately causing problems in Max and is a Known Issue.

iru69

2008-05-14, 05:50 AM

Thank you for your suggestion. In my case, not only do I not have an IntelliMouse driver installed, I've never had a Microsoft mouse hooked up to my computer.

Can someone else please confirm so we can quickly put this theory to bed before people start spreading it (these things are like a virus that never dies).

I have to say though, and this is in no way directed at you Scott, but the theory doesn't make much sense to me. The Max issues with IntelliMouse drivers have occurred for quite some time, and from my limited understanding, appeared with a new IntelliMouse driver a couple years back. In other words, the driver changed and the problems began. If anything, it's a bit disconcerting that Autodesk still haven't made their products compatible with Microsoft's IntelliMouse driver after all these years (even more so now that Autodesk clearly states on the Max product page that it's been "optimized for Microsoft IntelliMouse"). My video card drivers are the same, my mouse drivers are the same, my entire system is the same as it was when I used 2008. The only thing that has changed is Revit. And now Revit doesn't work right. I am willing to try to help determine if Revit is incompatible with certain hardware, but only if we keep it in that frame of context (until we know otherwise).

Intellimouse driver problems with Max are a known issue according to Microsoft.
Are we sure that shouldn't read "according to Autodesk"? I just find it somewhat curious that nVidia, ATI and Microsoft are all to blame for these on-going problems with Autodesk products. What's next, Intel processors?

Scott D Davis

2008-05-14, 08:22 PM

its truly an issue with Microsoft and their mouse drivers....not Autodesk. So its not causing your problems because clearly you dont have an MS mouse, so at least we can rule out one person. Anyone else using an Intellimouse with Revit that is having display issues?

Revit and Max are more related now than ever. Revit really has Max in it now....not mental ray. mental ray is used because Max is used as the renderer. So it makes alot of sense that if Intellimouse drivers caused problems in Max, they could be affecting Revit.

dbaldacchino

2008-05-14, 09:38 PM

Scott, did you look at the video I posted where you could see regeneration acting slow when using the middle mouse button to pan etc, but act faster when you pan through the new Steering wheel navigation controls?

EDIT: I am not running the final release yet, but Beta #3. I do have an IntelliMouse driver as I use an optical 5 button MS mouse so I could try to uninstall it to test. I have not experienced the same degree of slowdown, just a little bit between 2008 and 2009. Scrolling with the middle mouse button is considerably jumpier. I have also seen users that istalled bluetooth cards with a bluetooth mouse and occasionally, it crashed Revit. I've even seen cases where the 3D display messed up (objects far from where your mouse cursor is were getting highlighted and not those objects directly under it. I've also seen cases related to this issue where doors could not be inserted in 3d views.) Reinstalling the mouse driver or changing it solved the issue. So there does seem to be a connection between mouse drivers and display as Scott suggests.

Chad Smith

2008-05-14, 10:13 PM

I get a greater slowing of performance with 2009 over 2008 on my larger projects, and I also occasionally get display artifacts which immediately disappear after I do a zoom/pan which never happened in 2008.

I don't have a microsoft mouse or any mouse for that fact as I am using a pen tablet, and I also don't have any Intellimouse drivers installed, just the standard Windows XP mouse driver.

Richard McCarthy

2008-05-15, 05:44 AM

That's all just blowing sunshine. Here's support's response 3 weeks ago to my filing a request:
Yes, Open GL is enabled

----- Original Message ----- From: product.support.communications@autodesk.com

To: gwnelson@optonline.net

Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 2:38 PM

Subject: SR# 1-3583804421 - Graphic errors

http://www.autodesk.com/images/ad_logo_email.gif Autodesk Subscription

Hi Glenn,

Are you using OpenGL Hardware Acceleration? It can be found under Options > Graphic tab.

Best Regards,

Jerome Harris

Autodesk Support Team
They told me to turn it off.

LOL, I really starting to think that my theory might be right.

Either :

1. Most people are simply running in software mode all along and don't even know what OPENGL is or don't know how to properly test it

and / or

2. The ostriches at Autodesk are putting their collective heads in the sand

Honestly, Revit is in dire need for a graphic engine rewrite. The simple "Enable OpenGL" and "Enable OpenGL Overlay Plane" are TWO FEATURES. TWO! And they can't get it right. In 3DS MAX you get graphic performance features such as box-proxy degradation, distance based proxy degradation, (new in MAX) etc, features that should have being in Revit.
But then again, Autodesk wants to milk us dry isn't it, that's why these will never see the day. Case in point is their purchase of NavisWork last year, NavisWork has lots of features I can think of that would perfectly integrated with Revit.

tyler.doerr

2008-05-15, 01:13 PM

I'm currently working for a sister company in DC and we just Upgraded over the weekend. I have a Dell Precision that is no slug by any means. I did notice performance problems and it definately slowed down. Also I have a question to throw out there. I ALWAYS use the scroll button and press it for panning. Basically zoom and pan with my middle button is all I do, rarely will I zoom extents and never window. What happened to the pan option? I hit the middle button and all of a sudden my drawing is like 2 states over. It's nowhere near where I was drawing. Now I have to hit F8, make sure that the pointer is in that stupid steering wheel over the pan portion, pan the screen (which by the way the steering wheel blocks the view), then escape out of the steering wheel. Are they kidding? My most frequently used navigation option has been changed from a simple click to a 4 step 3 click process. Is there any way to avoid this? It's so frustrating, this is one thing that wasn't broken till now. It's hard to imagine why they would make such a drastic navigating option. If you have any suggestions please let me know, otherwise when I head back to Phoenix, I'm opting to stay in 2008. Thanks for listening!

Wes Macaulay

2008-05-15, 04:17 PM

Hi Tyler -- not sure why 2009 would be doing this to you all of a sudden. If you're using the Intellimouse or Setpoint drivers, make sure your middle/wheel button is configured to be a middle button... else you may get a Universal Scroll happening, and that can take you anywhere except where you want to be!

Andrew Dobson

2008-05-16, 08:13 AM

Just downloaded the latest Performance driver for our Quadro FX1500 cards.

Revit 2009 is now as fast as 2008 was, with no problems at all. We all have intellimice, but have no special drivers installed for them, just the standard windows ones.

clog boy

2008-05-16, 09:31 AM

Based on page one and this one.

We'll soon start working with Revit, as soon as the licenses are in.
Our BIMbo has a new quadcore machine, it runs just about ten times faster than my dualcore 3ghz beast. Don't know why, probably due to the solid amount of RAM.

I actually hope they replace OpenGL support with DirectX. I mean, has anyone ever worked with 3D pdf? Adobe has a 30 day trial version of Acrobat 3D. The 3D performance of that Acrobat file is ten times faster and then some as the graphical performance in Revit. I'm quite confident DirectX support will speed things up.

Also, anyone who uses a R2008 project, can you open using Audit and then save-as? I experience a drop in file size when doing that and consider it a good way to 'clean the file up'.

aaronrumple

2008-05-16, 02:12 PM

I actually hope they replace OpenGL support with DirectX. I mean, has anyone ever worked with 3D pdf? Adobe has a 30 day trial version of Acrobat 3D. The 3D performance of that Acrobat file is ten times faster and then some as the graphical performance in Revit. I'm quite confident DirectX support will speed things up.

Wouldn't a switch to DirectX break our ability to create a 3D PDF? If I reacall, the whole basis of 3D PDF is its ability to capture the OpenGL information from the application?

guy.messick825831

2008-05-16, 06:52 PM

I've just revisited all the recent posts, and thought I would try adjusting the 3D setting for my FX1500M card, per some suggestions from Wes et al. After working for a while, switching all setting via the application overide mode in the Nvidia control Panel - I had it!, force off Vertical Sync & switch "Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration" to Single Display performance mode. Great performance, stellar even. Then I pulled Revit over to my 22" flat panel from the M90 laptop. No go, when they say single display mode, they mean it. So, I'm back to Open GL off, until a fix arrives. sigh

UPDATE: I configured my system so that the flat panel is primary, and that's where I run Revit anyway. When I take the laptop on the road, the display reverts to the laptop flat panel - works great! I have great performance with shadows, etc. Except it's lot of work to do this, and I can't run two session of Revit, one in each monitor.

tbh

2008-06-12, 09:25 PM

Bryan,

Like you, I've noticed some SERIOUS memory issues with Revit 2009. I ran the beta for 2 months with only one crash. At the time i was running several other programs and attempting to render so it was not a big surprise.

However, we installed 2009 yesterday and it hasn't been pleasant so far. To begin with, everytime we tried to upgrade any of our projects that would give a memory error and crash. Our IT guy had just recently updated the graphics drivers and he was sure they were fine but he downloaded them anyway. That appeard to be the problem and we were able to upgrade.

However, as people began working on the projects they've have been crashing consistently throughout the day (4 times on one computer). The people here are very good about dealing with these issues. Unlike many offices they have come to realize there are always issues with the new software but I can't expect them to put up with it for too long. It stars eating into the hours which are tight already. We are watching the situation and hopefully it just goes away. It just seems very strange that we had relatively few problems in 2008 and now the same projects are crashing 2009. And it's not like we have the choice of going back to 2008 until we figure out whats causing it.

We run on Dells here also. I've tried all the typical suggestions, OpenGL, 3G switch, yada yada.

Matt Brennan

2008-06-12, 09:37 PM

Don't know if anyone has posted in this thread yet but there is a new build out now on Autodesk's website.

Happy Reviting and Thank you Factory!!!

Wes Macaulay

2008-06-13, 12:41 AM

Just so you all know -- Revit 2009 WU1 partially addresses display performance degradation in 2009 as compared with 2008. They are continuing to investigate the problem and will issue another web update once the problem has been resolved.

I resist the temptation to dis the Factory on the display system since Revit's "parametric change engine" makes the software completely unique. It may well be that the whole methodology of how we select objects on the screen -- the heart of the PCE -- is an intrinsic part of the challenge of making Revit work with any display system. Revit 2009 includes some changes to how changes are replicated throughout the database, and it may be that this improvement brought along some baggage in the display department... apparently unconnected things in programming can sometimes interact with unintended consequences.

johnf.77896

2008-06-13, 03:02 PM

I have noticed that when I upgrade a project to a newer verison it has always seemed slower, from back on R6 thru each release until now with 2009. Maybe I am wrong but I think it has to do with all of the familes, setup etc that the newer version is trying to read. It seems better when you start a project from scratch in the new release.

John Fleming
GMK Architecture, inc.

L Wood

2008-06-13, 11:18 PM

Has anyone experienced 3d views in “shaded with edges” mode degrade to a wireframe-like type of visual? Once this happens you spin around a bit in the view to figure out what’s going on, the model elements visually degrade further.
The other 3d views are fine- just the one that has degraded is affected. Once it’s there… closing/opening the file or restarting the computer won’t fix it. The only work-around I have is to delete the view and re-make it.

We have two users in the office who have this issue.

Dell Precision PWS690
Intel Xeon
CPU5160 @3 GHz
2.99GHz, 3.25GB

Windows Pro 2002
(Open GL is off)

Everything else is working great... and we have some big files.

dbaldacchino

2008-06-14, 04:23 AM

Yes!! I saw this last week and couldn't figure out what was going on. The user told me that everything went transparent (by phone) and I was like....uhm, you're in wireframe. And this person kept saying that they have color on the screen. So I thought that perhaps she overrode elements to be transparent or perhaps material transparency, but after asking her to do some checks, everything was fine. The next day I went to physically see the issue and I couldn't understand what was going on. I finally created a new 3D view and deleted the old one. Nothing I did fixed that corrupted 3D view. I thought it was a one off event, but perhaps not. The user was running a Dell Latitude D830 in a very small and simple model (playing around in Revit, learning it slowly and modeling a small house).

Dimitri Harvalias

2008-06-15, 03:07 AM

I had the same problem with a clients file as well and it seems to be related to the shaded views issue when upgrading.
iru69 gave me a few links that did solve the problem but recreating the 3D view was probably quicker.
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=78921
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=78774
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=78794

iru69

2008-06-15, 07:48 PM

Did you just install the WU1 update? What's your video card? Do you have OpenGL on? Does turning OpenGL off (and reopening the project) fix it?

I believe this issue is related to Revit's whole broken graphic subsystem.

[FONT=Arial]Has anyone experienced 3d views in “shaded with edges” mode degrade to a wireframe-like type of visual?

dbaldacchino

2008-06-15, 11:11 PM

In my case the file was started in 2009 on the first build and is still on the same build. Turning OpenGL on & off didn't solve the issue. We just deleted the view and recreated it.

iru69

2008-06-15, 11:24 PM

I just went back and looked at what I've been experiencing with OpenGL turned on... I guess it's more like chunks of the model "disappearing" from views than it being "wireframe"... so I think you're right, it's probably an unrelated issue.

In my case the file was started in 2009 on the first build and is still on the same build. Turning OpenGL on & off didn't solve the issue. We just deleted the view and recreated it.

petervanko

2009-01-15, 02:09 PM

So...I am one of those lame people who doesn't dive into each new version like a child on Christmas morning--I tend to let Autodesk distribute their service packs and fix the thing. If there is one thing you can bet on, it is that they can't do a solid release.

Anyway, nearly a year after RA2009 shipped, I am taking the exploratory leap. And--you guessed it--am dying performance-wise (system-wide). Did I accidentally download the 64 bit version??? This is really weird...

Wes Macaulay

2009-01-15, 06:24 PM

The issue with 2009 (have you installed Web Update 3 yet?) is still display performance, which is down 30% from 2008's performance. So all the views seem sluggish in comparison to 2008.

We just sucked it up and moved on. Many other users are reporting the same problem. Based on the fact the we saw a DirectX DLL in the Revit 2009 directory, I'm hoping this is the year we see OpenGL and DirectX support to solve performance issues for the majority of users.

dbaldacchino

2009-01-16, 12:02 AM

With my new machine (M6400 with Vista 64 and Revit 64bit), I found that disabling OpenGL has made the system faster when regenerating after a zoom/pan (not when using shadows). And actually, using the steering wheel options to pan and zoom is faster than using the scroll button.

jpolding

2009-02-13, 08:26 PM

I would like to add my voice to this issue. Some clients are finding Revit 2009 is slower than 2008. Autodesk tech support has confirmed that it is slower. Their advice was turn on the 3gb switch. Does anyone know if this has this been fixed in 2010?

(sorry if I missed the answer on one of the posts)

Scott Womack

2009-02-13, 09:37 PM

For the 32 bit version, I doubt it will be substantially faster. One of the big things published on 2010 is native 64 bit support, meaning it'll use all possible memory on a 64 bit system.

Wes Macaulay

2009-02-13, 10:43 PM

Jay, 2009 was 30% slower than 2008 on display performance. It felt slower as a result, and the 3Gb switch would do nothing to mitigate this.

Major changes are afoot in Revit 2010 in this regard, and I have no idea how the released version of 2010 will perform. Revit 2009 64-bit posted about a 10% increase in performance on the benchmarks, and we won't even be able to check 2010 32-bit vs 64-bit on the same machine because the installer auto-installs the correct version based on OS detection. We'd have to have two computers with the same specs with the two different OS's on them to see if 64-bit performance is much different than 32-bit.

I believe DirectX is being favoured and OpenGL dropped in Revit2010 and beyond, and how well that works is going to be an ongoing story. DirectX allows software to query and better utilize video hardware so I assume that's the reason for this move.