Full Service Project sizes

[james.klatt]

What is the largest project anyone has done full service? (MEP, Structural and Arch in 1 model). How did refresh rates for arch get effected by having MEP and structural in the same model? Our last project we broke up by discipline, but of course MEP could not connect to arch lights, etc. I would like to get around that by trying 1 model for everything, but I have my concerns.

[mhartmann]

we're just finishing a rec center, with arch and mep (in house) in the same model, structural (separate company) is linked. the structural is 28 meg, our arch/mep model is 102 meg. it runs okay for a project that big, the mechanical and plumbing guys are having the most problems with speed. arch and elec aren't so bad. we are currently trying our first project with separate arch and mep models linked. we had a meeting about it yesterday, and decided that we like the all in one theory better, due to a bunch of disconnect problems with mep hosting and limits of things it can do in general.
Mike Hartmann

[james.klatt]

How big of a rec center was it Sq footage?

[mhartmann]

it's 80,000 square feet, has an outdoor pool, indoor pool, gym/courts, fitness center, and some admin/office area.

[ben.136902]

I am currently doing a 95,000 sq ft Nursing facility and using revit MEP and Revit buildings. We are not having any major slow down issues except when Volumes are being calculated....so if you do not need to work on the hvac plans TURN THEM OFF!! It saves a lot of time.

SQ FT has little to do with the performance, a nursing facility is about the worst, we have a very high density of walls and components to sq ft.

Its almost like a ratio of components to sq ft would be a better way to rate how the model will perform.

Lot of other factors come into play as well - order of how you model etc....If you design your building, then put all the ceilings in, and then make a lot of changes to the model - you will see major drawbacks in performance as revit must recalc the ceilings. So the order of events is critical.

Worksets help too....although on very fast machines i dont see as big a difference in speed unless you spend a lot of time in 3D....once you work in revit long enough you find you prob will not use 3D as much....as you just know what it looks like without having to see it. Kinda like the Matrix......and all the numbers falling from the screen i guess.

[james.klatt]

Yah already seeing the matrix thing. I've been working on 1 project for the last 2 years and rarely use 3D anymore just a section or 2.

Reason why I was asking square footage was because the project we did was 350,000 sq ft, but it was broken up per discipline MEP, Struct and Arch. Even with utilizing worksets to no end, MEP and Arch(sub) had to move to 64-bit machines because RAM requirements got to large.

MEP model was approx 75 mb, struct was approx 205 mb and arch approx 350 mb (all values before purging). Trying to prevent purchasing more 64-bit machines for arch side.

From all the info I have gather MEP is what weighs down a model the most, specifically mechanical (ducts, pipes). So square footage could give me a rough comparison on size of mechanical system. To see how large someone has gone successfully without memory or regen issues.

[ben.136902]

When you are working on a 64 bit machine how much ram is revit using. What i mean is a usual workload, not the maximum but the usual.....

And the same on a 32 bit machine

[james.klatt]

Well we have only worked on that 1 project in this office and up to 75% CD we were functioning at 1.5GB on 32-bit. Soon there after we hit the 2.3GB max on 32-bit so we upgraded to 64-bit machine running 32-bit Revit. We ran that for another month or so consistantly at 2.5GB or so managing worksets. Then once 64-bit revit came we were able to open more worksets and now that we are at 100% CD we often run at excess of 4 GB with no problems. However I would like to keep our 64-bit machines to MEP side since that's where the memory hog is, and keep arch on 32-bit with 3GB switch.