Project Upgrade from 2008 – 2009?

[Matt Brennan]

Hi Everyone,

We are looking at upgrading one of our bigger projects in the office from Revit 2008 to 2009. Prior to doing this, we want to know what your thoughts are on it. Are there still bugs in the program? I know the graphics issue still remains in SP1. As Autodesk has pointed out there will be another service pack due this September in which we may wait to upgrade then.

The project is 450megs (Optimizing it brings it down to 250megs) and contains about 10 links in it. But any thoughts would be appreciated as it will take a few hours alone to make this switch.

Thanks in advance,

[Andre Carvalho]

Let's start with the upgrade process first: If any of the links are Revit files, you can unload them from your main file and upgrade the separately before upgrading the main file.

Another point: I had a +/- 400mb file that couldn't be updated when I tried it using windows 32 bits. Using windows 64 did the job.

I don't regret upgrading the file to Revit 2009 WU1, so far.

Andre Carvalho

[Matt Brennan]

We use xp64 in the office here. At home, I have Vista Ultimate 64 loaded. I tried upgrading last weekend as a test in which I had no problem upgrading to 2009.

The question is, is it worth it?

Thanks for the input Andre,

[Rick Houle]

Well, that is a great question.
I have a handful of 250-350mb projects in 2008 and I'm slightly apprehensive about the upgrade having read so much about performance degradation. (I do not believe all I read but I also cannot afford to make people unhappy at this juncture of our 2-yr BIM transition.)

I am waiting for the next update before i make my move. But it would be great to hear from some people who have done this upgrade with large files on 32 bit systems.

[dgreen.49364]

We recently upgraded a project, not quite as large as yours, about 125 mb with a linked file of about 70 mb. The only issue we had afterward was with some of the section views. For some reason the annotation crop on several sections got stretched to a point that most of the text was not showing up. Threw us off at first. It appeared that our drawings had "gone back in time" to a point when the sections had not yet been noted. As it turns out we simply had to stretch the annotation crop back in place and everything magically reappeared.

[Scott Womack]

Well, that is a great question.
I have a handful of 250-350mb projects in 2008 and I'm slightly apprehensive about the upgrade having read so much about performance degradation. (I do not believe all I read but I also cannot afford to make people unhappy at this juncture of our 2-yr BIM transition.)

I am waiting for the next update before i make my move. But it would be great to hear from some people who have done this upgrade with large files on 32 bit systems.

Personally, I have not seen the "degraded performance" issue. A Large part of that seems to have to do with the video cards. My previous employer is having issues, but they are using machines where the video is on the mother board. My present employer has been buying slightly enhanced separate video cards, and none of our machines have seen ANY slower performance issues. Not sure why the video on motherboard seems to make an issue. Possibly there is some "sharing" of something that causes an issue?

[cdetore]

We also upgraded a large project (~180 MB) with 4 linked files varying in size from 20 MB to 100 MB. The file upgraded with only one problem. A precast panel family with symbolic lines in it was messed up. We just re-aligned and locked them in that family and have had no problems with it since.

I have not seen the performance issues that other folks have mentioned but we keep the video drivers up to date. I do think that shadows slow down display panning and rotation a bit, but I have not received any complaints about it yet. The benefits of the new rendering engine and the ability to have linked files be room bounding was of greater importance to the team.

Good Luck,

CD

[twiceroadsfool]

IMHO, its definetely worth the upgrade. Aside from some minor issues at the start until i upgraded a video card driver, 2009 has been great.

The only reason i would consider not upgrading is if your entire 2008 model hs custom accurender materials, and youll need to render immediately after the upgrade...

[Rick Houle]

Thanks for the replies. It is refreshing to read a positive thread on this topic.
I had upgraded a couple projects for evaluation purposes and I did not notice anything of concern - though 2009 did report on errors that were not reported in 2008, which I chalk up as an improved platform.

Regardless, I am going to wait until the "September" release since it is close and upgrading here is a big undertaking.

Do any of you NOT uninstall your previous version before installing the update? Is that even possible? (not an option here, but I am wondering how one might make "light work" of a massive upgrade)

[Matt Brennan]

Hi Guys,

Thank you soo much for getting back to me with your thoughts. It has greatly helped us with our decision to upgrade to 2009.

All the best,

[twiceroadsfool]

Rick-

We keep the previous 2 versions on. The only reason being, in retail, we have projects that have been finished recently, that we will have to go in for minor alterations here and there. Upgrading everything to 2009 is fine, until you run in to something like "they want a 3d image rendered, and give you two hours notice" and upgrading to 09 means remaking your materials, hehehehe. By and large though, we upgrade projects as we get new releases.

Weve been fortunate to not experience any hardships, save some troubles with graphics cards drivers. While i understand im tagged an "apologist" by some here, when we DID have problems, a quick conversation with Autodesk was had, and the issue was resolved. Weve got about 25 Revit users, and we keep everyone ont he newest release when possible.

We pull the plug at two versions back. Anything older than that, if we have to go in, it gets upgraded...

[Rick Houle]

Interesting... so you are running side-by-side Revits and you have no problems with:

program stability (i'm an old school cad realist), or
people accidentally opening and saving in the wrong version..?
(I personally have parallel installs with no probs. but i'm not in production)

I love the idea... Makes sense for Accurender-based jobs too... This would be a tough sell to I.T. but I may have to plead the case given your points.

What about incremental web updates? Do they install ON TOP of themselves or do they install side-by-side also?

[chodosh]

What about incremental web updates? Do they install ON TOP of themselves or do they install side-by-side also?
I don't believe there has ever been a web build that could be installed in parallel, but regarding on top of the existing build, it historically has depended on the build itself. Some have requried uninstalling Revit to reinstall the current build. However, one annual release version can exist next to another, but the interative build updates for each are looking for the same directories as the annual version, each of which is unique. Therefore, there are not really any stability issues with two annual release versions running in parallel, they maintain themselves pretty succinctly in separate directories. Sometimes it is necessary to run two versions for a while until all projects are upgraded, as has been discussed here. A lot of people left 9.1 on with 2008 and were swapping out custom icons to make them look different to users, thankfully 2009 came out with a new, different icon (but we lost the tri-color distinction between RA, RS, and RMEP).
-LC

[Rick Houle]

This thread has really got me thinking side-by-side installs are the way to transition. Makes good sense for 2009,, and will be a tough sell.

One more question on that regard,
What about your library content? Do you convert it to the newer version? Do you duplicate it? Or do you not worry about it at all...?

[patricks]

This thread has really got me thinking side-by-side installs are the way to transition. Makes good sense for 2009,, and will be a tough sell.

One more question on that regard,
What about your library content? Do you convert it to the newer version? Do you duplicate it? Or do you not worry about it at all...?

We tend to leave the library as-is. That way 2009 will just upgrade the family when you load it into a project, but 2008 can still load it, also.

The only issue comes from using the Edit Family button in 2009 to edit a family with the 2009 family editor. If you save over what you had, then 2008 can no longer use it.

[Rick Houle]

There's some great info here. Thanks.

I'm afraid the side-by-side argument will probably break down for me on that last point.

Unless I can isolate the library, or duplicate it, I.T. will turn their chairs at the point of a "mixed version library"... nonetheless, they may have no choice but to listen.

The way most software platforms are going, "forcing" or "influencing" our upgrades on a yearly basis or less, this thread holds a lot of merit if you want to keep up with the community.

[twiceroadsfool]

I would definetely duplicate the library. We keep three copies of it on the network, for the three versions we keep active.

Of course, also worth mentioning only two of us in the office have write privileges, so we dont have to worry about things getting saved in the wrong version... That way there is some QC on the items being used. If someone edits the fam, they save it in the project directory, then submit it for review if they think it should go in the regular library...

[sven.129574]

Excellent discussion, folks. We too are having to look at whether or not to migrate 2008 projects to 2009. So far, we've been keeping old projects in 2008 and starting new ones in 2009, but I think I like the idea of migrating after the next Web Update. It's just too much work maintaining two different versions of our content libraries, and some of the 2008 projects might be going on for another whole year.

[clog boy]

Being new to this thread, I start with responding to the first question. Just by glancing at the other posts I didn't see this suggestion yet.

I would recommend first checking the features list to check if there's a new and exciting feature you simply need on that project. Then you could go on, open the project and see what happens, but from personal experience I can tell upgrading the links first is best. If you get errors unique to RAC2009 then proceed with great caution and plan an extra hour or two to fix some errors.

Expect RAC2009 to treat things differently from RAC2008. The quality of the end product will benefit but not by itself. If it's not worth the effort then finish what you've started in 2008, especially if the project has already been progressed greatly and output from that file has already been corresponded with external partners.

[armbarsalot]

Thats a big project. How is your printing going?? i would expect most of your 3gb allocation gets used up just opening the files. Sure would be nice to have a 64 bit program wouldn't it?