Revit 2008 and overlay planes

[Wes Macaulay]

After filing a support request because of crashes we were experiencing with Revit 2008, we have been told by Autodesk to enable overlay planes in Revit (under Settings > Options > Graphics). Enabling overlay planes has caused these stability problems to disappear. Because Revit is using a newer version of the OpenGL language, it now appears that overlay planes should be enabled in Revit. If you are having stability problems with Revit 2008, enable overlay planes and see if your problems continue.

Note that in the latest build of Revit 2008 use of overlay planes is no longer mandatory. This improves display of annotations that have a transparent background. If you continue to experience instability with overlay planes off, turn them back on and see if instability continues. If it does, post here in this forum and we'll try to help resolve the problem.

[Lashers]

Wes, does that mean that OpenGL in on its way out? The only way I get Revit to display properly is OpenGL off / Overlay Planes on.

[Wes Macaulay]

What card do you have mate? If you can't use OpenGL, then your card isn't compatible with the OpenGL implementation used in Revit 2008.

Or more to the point: the manufacturer's drivers aren't working right with Revit.

OpenGL for CAD is here to stay for some time

[sultarc]

I've had some crashes in the last two days with open GL enabled. It worked well for a few days then started acting up. With Open GL enabled, I get a message at each startup something like, due to operation system limitations and graphics card some graphics may not appear correctly. Then it says to turn it off if you have problems.

I don't know if the crashes I had had anything to do with open GL being on. I do know that with it on everything with shadows enabled works better.

So both open GL and overlay planes both need to be enabled?

[Wes Macaulay]

The crashes may well have to do with Overlay Planes being disabled. My crashes would occur if Overlay Planes were disabled, with OpenGL on or off! So with 2008 it appears that the ideal setting is with both OpenGL and Overlay Planes enabled.

[Lashers]

Wes, I have a ATi FireGL V3400. I switche to Vista a bit quick and put the card in after . . . thinking about doing a cold install of Vista and re-installing all my progs and or going back to XP Pro . .??

[BomberAIA]

My computer started to lag and I thought something was running in the background. I turned Open GL off and it worked fine. If I turn Overlay Planes off and Open GL on, it works a little weird but it speeds up Revit when I have the shadows on. My card is an ATI X1900. Everything worked fine before the upgrade.

[trombe]

Wes,
I also agree that Open GL = On and Overlay Planes = On works great, with no current problems with shadows (ahhhh. almost like Bailey's Irish cream ) being smooth, rendering no problems at all, no crashes with RA08.

LEADTEK Quadro FX1500 256 Mb PCI_Express, original NVidia drivers out of box.
(brand new last week)
good !

regards
trombe

[dhurtubise]

I used NVidia in the past (Dell) and now im stock with ATI (Lenovo) nad Nvidia are light years ahead of what ATI can do. So with Dell both we're on without any problems.
It was an M90 btw

[BomberAIA]

I talked to Revit at the AIA Convention and he told me Revit uses Open GL for some graphic operations and Overlay Planes for other. He told me 08 changed the way Revit uses both. That is why my ATI X1900 is not working w/ great performance.