Hardware requirements for big projects

[sifuentes]

We are trying to determine if we should use Revit to do the Cd's for a residential tower 36 levels high (340,000+ sf). The main issue is the hardware. Does anyone know what kind of software is required for this kind of work? Has any one completed construction documents for a project this size using Revit?

I have read previous posts about this, and there are mixed opinions and statements regarding the successful implementation of project of this scale. It seems CZOOG has had successfully experience implementing big projects. Jim Balding was experimenting with a prototype to come up with best practice solutions for projects of this type. Could you guys share what kind of equipment did you use in these projects? What hardware configuration would be best for this kind of project? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

[papurajx]

Did you watch the Webcast of SOM on Freedom Tower? If not watch the recording. They have outlined the Hardware (used) requirement for their project. You do not need such a powerful system but definetly a better system than a normal (workhorse) with 2 GB RAM, Xeon processor etc.

[hand471037]

The ram's the most important thing. The dual Xeon's are great, but not required. Even the 3 gig's that they (SOM) have hacked their machines so that Revit can use more than just 2 gigs isn't required, but at least a gig is, and with something that size I'd say 2 gigs would be better. But if you have to scrimp, do it first with the 3D cards, then with the processor speed, and then, lastly, with the Ram. Any modern (fast) P4 or AMD should be fine.

[christopher.zoog51272]

Hi Carlos,

Our typical workstation is single Xeon 2.8 with 2 gigs of ram and an Nvidia QuadroFX base board.

My workstation is a dual xeon 2.66

We are upgrading to windowXP from 2000 next month, so we will be enabling HyperThreading on all of our Xeon chips. We'll see if that helps at all.

We have documented building as large as 200,000 sf on 4 floors, which can bog down if you are not careful. We're scheduled to start a 10 story hotel conversion to senior housing in the spring, I'm hoping 7.0 group improvements will allow this to run smoothly.

good luck.

-Z

[sifuentes]

Thanks a lot for the input guys, I really appreciate it. We want to consider this carefully. We have experienced slow downs with our current hardware set up with much smaller projects. We are currently running 1.4GHz with 512Mb ram. The video cards have 16Mb of memory.

[DaveP]

We just issued CDs last week for a 120,000 sf Hospital/MOB.
Final model size was about 68 Meg.
We're running P4M 2.4GHz with 1Gig of RAM. We started with 768 Meg of Ram, but once our model got above 50 Meg, we quickly stole (I mean borrowed) from similar, non- Revit machines & went to 1 Gig. We were OK with 1 Gig until we started getting a lot of details in, then we started hurting. Still not quite sure if it was RAM or # of people on the project (8 in the last couple of weeks) but we had SaveToCentral times of 20 to 30 minutes regularly. Even more of a killer was "Make Element Editable". We try to select what we need, but there's always one more thing. It often took us 2 to 3 minutes to get that one more element editable. "Central file is being accessed by someone else".

Anyway, I'd say 2 Gig RAM is going to be your most crucial purchase.

<g> I just did spell check. It recognizes KHz and MHz, but not GHz. Better upgrade.
It also suggested "Sufficiently" for SaveToCentral". Not if you're talking 1/2 hour Save times!

[hand471037]

Didn't SOM say that they noticed a huge improvement when they upped their network connection speed?

Dave, adding more ram might not do anything to your save to central & workset request times if it's the network speed itself that's causing the issue. We've run into issues here with simluar things (and instability) due to a rather strange network setup, and we've consitered changing the network to homerun from each station directly to the main patchbay and to a better router (we're a small office, so that's not too much work). What kind of network do you have there? If it turns out that the netword is so important to large projects, it might look like we'll be changing ours after all...

[christopher.zoog51272]

Still not quite sure if it was RAM or # of people on the project (8 in the last couple of weeks) but we had SaveToCentral times of 20 to 30 minutes regularly. Even more of a killer was "Make Element Editable". We try to select what we need, but there's always one more thing. It often took us 2 to 3 minutes to get that one more element editable. "Central file is being accessed by someone else".

Dave, what is your lan speed 10/100 or gigabit? We are upgrading to gigabit lan for some mahcines next week, i let you know if we see a major increase (or decrese lol) I believe SOM saw a decrease in STC time as result the extra of network bandwidth and simplifing the network structure (less hops, etc)

[christopher.zoog51272]

beat me to it jeffery ;)

[DaveP]

We've got a 100 Meg network.
We did put a sniffer on the server when we were having lots of problems, and it never reported over 50% network utilization.
I did see in the Windows Task Manager that we'd often see the Commit Charge go over 1 Gig. But the biggest problem seemed to happen when we had 6 or eight people all banging on the model. My theory is that Jeff starts his STC and gets all his worksets updated. Then Gina starts her STC before Jeff's is done. First Gina gets worksets updated. Then Jeff - still in the middle of saving gets Gina's changes. Then Gina gets Jeff's second round of changes. et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually, everyone has updated all the updates, entropy ensues, and all the Saves are done. With two people, that's not too bad, but add a third or fourth person saving, and it increases exponentially.

That's my thinking, anyway. I've seen the "Updating worksets" dialog box come up two or three times with different worksets listed throughout the course of one STC.

[Wes Macaulay]

Interesting post, DaveP!

I see in Revit 7 there's a Documents on the Web section in the Help menu which details some Microsoft hotfixes which deal with large file saving issues on networks. Might want to check those out...

[GuyR]

We are upgrading to gigabit lan for some mahcines

Doesn't gigabit also structure the packets differently which gives additional boosts? Kinda like 802B v's 802G

I'm no network expert but wouldn't having the server and revit machines on one switch be the best way to go? Then a router from the revit-server to the rest of the LAN.

Guy

[MikeJarosz]

Well, yes we have powerful machines and we did speed up our network, but we don't want you to get the impression that Revit is now a speed demon on large projects. There is still room for a faster, leaner, meaner Revit.

[mmulvey]

Thanks a lot for the input guys, I really appreciate it. We want to consider this carefully. We have experienced slow downs with our current hardware set up with much smaller projects. We are currently running 1.4GHz with 512Mb ram. The video cards have 16Mb of memory.

Wow, to be honest, I am surprised you get any kind of performance with those specs.

Years ago I asked an expert what system he recommended for CAD - his response was to get nothing less than a Cray - and he was only half-joking

We run P4 3 Ghz with 4Mb cache CPUs, 4 Gb RAM and minimum 256 Mb VRAM with a Gb ethernet and it still crashes/chokes way too often.

We don't run particularly large projects - current ones on Revit are 30-40k ft²

I suspect some memory leaks and other issues are draining system resources - in the middle of a choke/slowdown TaskManager reports hardly any CPU/RAM usage - go figure. Last word I received from ADESK was to think of going to 64-bit systems so we can add more RAM...

Hell, maybe I should troll eBay for a few Crays.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Check out the date on the post your referenced... it's from 2004!
Today that spec would barely allow you to run Windows Vista never mind Revit. :lol: