Improved Revit Performance

[sbrown]

Ok, any of you who work on large projects know that revit can get very slow and start to regen, etc. And you spend a lot of time waiting. So here is my solution to almost double my productivity. It will cost you approx. $1200-$1400 more or less depending on what you want. You will need a 2nd computer(I suggest a good laptop) and a NETGEAR hub. Yes I'm talking about working on 2 computers at the same time. I just got way too tired of waiting for STC and regens with groups, so what I do now is I hook my laptop up right next to my desktop, make 2 local files one sdbrown and one sdbrownprint(or whatever). Now whenever revit bogs down on a save to central or other command, I just switch over and work on the other machine until it boggs down, then stc and switch back to the other machine. Basically it allows you to work full time instead of waiting for stc's and regens.

[aaronrumple]

Ok, any of you who work on large projects know that revit can get very slow and start to regen, etc. And you spend a lot of time waiting. So here is my solution to almost double my productivity. It will cost you approx. $1200-$1400 more or less depending on what you want. You will need a 2nd computer(I suggest a good laptop) and a NETGEAR hub. Yes I'm talking about working on 2 computers at the same time. I just got way too tired of waiting for STC and regens with groups, so what I do now is I hook my laptop up right next to my desktop, make 2 local files one sdbrown and one sdbrownprint(or whatever). Now whenever revit bogs down on a save to central or other command, I just switch over and work on the other machine until it boggs down, then stc and switch back to the other machine. Basically it allows you to work full time instead of waiting for stc's and regens.

I'm with you there. I also use a slave laptop for background printing as those shadows can chew up some processor time.

I'm anxious to see if a dual core could do a similar trick running two sessions of Revit on the same system.

[irwin]

Anyone doing this, be really careful that you have different Revit user names on the two machines, otherwise you will lose work.

[matthewh.104177]

Interesting idea. Wouldn't it be a problem, though, when you're hopping back and forth, that the hopped-to computer would be slightly not up-to-date without reloading latest or STC? I could see being in the middle of a task, saving to central, switching computers, and then needing something I just created or accidentally recreating certain elements.

[sbrown]

Yes I have 2 diff usernames, sdbrown and sdbrownprint. And I typically would be working on diff. tasks on each machine so they don't require the updated info from the other machine.

[Wes Macaulay]

I'm with you there. I also use a slave laptop for background printing as those shadows can chew up some processor time.

I'm anxious to see if a dual core could do a similar trick running two sessions of Revit on the same system.

When Revit starts up the OS assigns it to one of the CPUs. I don't believe Windows can move a process between CPUs once it's started. There's been some discussion here of setting Revit's affinity to a certain CPU, and I don't know if that's worthwhile. I suppose if one session of Revit was getting slow you could fire up a second session, change your worksets username and carry on with a second local file. Hopefully Windows would give the other, less busy CPU to the 2nd Revit process.

[ron.sanpedro]

For printing I am looking at implementing a remote desktop machine. Basically a box in the server room (or perhaps even a couple of Virtual Machines on a single box) with Remote Desktop enabled. You log on and print from the remote session, while your local session remains unaffected.
I haven't figured out how to deal with the local copy issue, but I think I can come up with something, at least while the Revit user count is low. I hope Revit automates the local copy someday, so that aspect becomes a non issue.

Best,
Gordon

[patricks]

I don't know about assigning Revit to one certain processor core, but I know on my dual-core rig at home, when I render something it uses both processor cores.

[Fred Blome]

Would a setup using Virtual PC allow you to separately access the second core?
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx
Virtual PC is free now.