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Thread: Managing large projects in Revit

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    Count (Formula) dbaldacchino's Avatar
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    Question Managing large projects in Revit

    Hi all,

    I kow this topic has been discussed in the past, especially during a class at AU 2006 & 2007 by James V.

    I was under the impression that when a project was split into worksets and only select worksets were opened, that somehow, whatever command seems slow when the whole project is open, would seem much faster when only part of the information was loaded. After some tests, I can't come to this conclusion. The only advantage I'm seeing is that by opening select worksets, your memory useage drops and you don't run the risk of running out of RAM. So as of now, I would say worksets can improve stability on large projects, together with reducing demand for RAM (and thus control harware costs)

    For example, here's a typical scenario. I have a large project and placing a wall is slow (you might be familiar with this....Revit churns and thinks, the progress bar moves to some percentage, then a bit more, than....almost....done). This happens whenever I move a wall or create a new one for example. Or add a door, or move one....it's just too sluggish. I couldn't find any constraints and the wall hosted families were minimal (some plumbing fixtures).

    The file was originally 215MB. I deleted all the groups (these were used as furniture "blocks"; yes, they should be families and nt groups) and the file slimmed by 55MB. There were 600 warnings and I quickly resolved them down to about 240 by deleting a bunch of overlapping walls and unbound rooms (remember, I'm just troubleshooting as quickly as possible here!). I also deleted 3000 beams and 4300 web joists from the project. These should be in a separate structural file. The project is now down to 93MB. That's what I call a big loser and it shouldn't act too sluggish. Or so I thought.

    So now I tried placing a wall....but Revit still churns a bit, although it's not as atrocious as before, but still not acceptable. So I decide to test how faster it would be if we split the building (High School, probably around 375,000SF foot print, 2 floors) into "X" worksets. So I just copied some walls onto a workset and closed everything else. I'm thinking that now when I draw a wall, it should fly as if I'm doing a single family residence. Not so fast. I could barely see a difference, as Revit still churns and hesitates before finishing the command.

    Are you noticing the same behavior on large projects? Is it that large projects will be slow, regardless of how many worksets are used and opened at a time? Any advice/observations/tips? I really don't know what else to look out for but can't convince myself that we have to live with this on large projects. Thanks for any feedback.
    Last edited by dbaldacchino; 2007-11-23 at 11:22 PM.

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    Default Re: Managing large projects in Revit

    Have you tried opening the file with selected worksets, rather than opening then unloading worksets? I have always had the sense that unloading then depends on Windows to eventually release the freed up RAM, and who knows when Windows gets around to it. My sense is that opening with limited worksets ensures that the lesser amount of ram is used from the begining.
    That said, I wonder if the issue isn't so much what is loaded as what the interactions are? Does everything behave the same if you just put a wall off to the side, where there are no interactions with grids, other walls, etc?

    Sure would be nice if Autodesk would talk just a little bit about how they INTEND we do this. This random 'seat of the pants meter' stuff gets a bit old.

    Gordon

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    Count (Formula) dbaldacchino's Avatar
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    Default Re: Managing large projects in Revit

    Hey Gordon,

    Yes, I did open select worksets too...nothing changed. When opening everything and then closing worksets, I could even see the RAM usage slowly fall until both methods pretty much used the same amount of RAM. I drew walls away and to the side, so they were not trying to clean up or anything, but it was still sluggish.

    I thought that if only select worksets are open, then Revit doesn't have to think about relationships affecting objects in closed worksets, but I'm not seeing that when experimenting with this project.

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    Default Re: Managing large projects in Revit

    Quote Originally Posted by dbaldacchino View Post
    Hey Gordon,

    Yes, I did open select worksets too...nothing changed. When opening everything and then closing worksets, I could even see the RAM usage slowly fall until both methods pretty much used the same amount of RAM. I drew walls away and to the side, so they were not trying to clean up or anything, but it was still sluggish.

    I thought that if only select worksets are open, then Revit doesn't have to think about relationships affecting objects in closed worksets, but I'm not seeing that when experimenting with this project.
    I would be tempted to put all the stuff on the un-opened worksets in a group, then convert that to a link and unload. Then perhaps detach the link. At THAT point you ought to see some performance improvement, along with a totally useless file But perhaps knowing just when performance jumps will allow the Factory to find an answer. Certainly they need to do something, because these big projects are not going away.

    Best of luck,
    Gordon

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    Default Re: Managing large projects in Revit

    Quote Originally Posted by dbaldacchino View Post
    Are you noticing the same behavior on large projects? Is it that large projects will be slow, regardless of how many worksets are used and opened at a time? Any advice/observations/tips? I really don't know what else to look out for but can't convince myself that we have to live with this on large projects. Thanks for any feedback.
    How complex are some of your families? You talk about furniture, for example. Those can get rather 'heavy'. Also are any of your families made from imported DWG or Sketchup files?

    Also do you have any imported DWGs at all?

    How many levels do you have? Are all your walls separated between levels, or do you have walls that go multiple levels?

    I mean, for contrast, I was once working on a 53 story building model in Revit, and while it could get slow, it didn't sound as slow as what you're dealing with...

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    Default Re: Managing large projects in Revit

    David,

    Just out of curiosity, how many rooms are defined in the project? In the past I have witnessed a "threshold" where expanding beyond "X" rooms seems to affect sketching performance. But it hasn't occurred predictably enough to say how many "X" is. I have arbitrarily blamed it on excessive errors in the database (primarily overlapping walls and room bounding errors) and your comment about 600 errors didn't surprise me. Did you create a new central file by using Save As?

    I'd also be suspicious about the excessive use of Modelling > Opening on your walls, I try to avoid using that in favor of opening components as they maintain the area bounding integrity of walls they cut while Modelling > Opening does not.

    I suggest you contact support to see if they can offer and help to clean up the database further.

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    Count (Formula) dbaldacchino's Avatar
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    Default Re: Managing large projects in Revit

    Hi Jeffrey,

    As for furniture, here's what I found that's not our standard families:

    a) Benches: 6 instances of an exterior bench (non-parameteric family), not very complex;
    b) Cabinet Storage: 29 instances of simple family (non-parametric);
    c) Display Cases: 8 instances, parametric height, width & depth, quite simple;
    d) Chairs: 3 "Corbu" (non-parametric);
    e) Desks: 1 instance of overly-detailed office desk, family containing 3D import only (FUMING!!)
    f) Lockers: 517 instances, parametric height, width & depth, simple (no arrays);
    g) Tables: 14 instances of simple, parametric, small coffee table & 1 end table;

    There are also a series of 2D furniture families (our standard stuff) containing chairs, round & square tables with chairs (parametric, containing arrays), & desks with chairs (parametric). There are no 3D forms in these families.

    I see 3 imported dwgs (they're in the V/G dialog but not in the Manage Links dialog). I would want to hunt these down and get rid of them. As a rule, we link dwgs and at this point, there are only 9 linked files + the 3 imports. I want those imports to be linked. We started this project from a model we got from the contractor, so there might be things in here that we didn't do ourselves.

    This is a two storey building, but there are 7 levels (some for hi/lo conditions, foundation and some duplicate existing & new levels, such as Level 1 - New and Level 1 - Existing). I wouldn't think this could cause a slow down.

    Walls seem to just go from floor to floor. Actually, their top constraints are unconnected and they have been given a finite height (ex: 14'-0").

    For kicks, I got rid of all non-standard furniture families, the topo import, purged about 240 items that were not used (families, styles, etc and a good number of jpgs) and the file slimmed by a further 21MB (deleting the 3D furniture only dropped the file size by 2.5MB). Compared to the original file (215MB), the new file (72MB) has speeded up considerably now. Besides what I mentioned above, I have gotten rid of some 350 warnings, deleted beams and joists and deleted furniture groups (not built as families). The file is now 1/3 of its original size. My next step is to go back to the original file and do those "non-destructive" operations (such as the purging and removal of imports & substituting groups with furniture families) and see what that yields in speed gain.

    There are some other weird things going on in this project, such as objects not assigned to any worksets (field is blank and when you close all worksets, these model elements still show up and stay loaded...filed SR on this). Once that is resolved and I have further news, I'll post back with the findings.

    I'm still curious as to whether breaking down in worksets and only loading select worksets should increase performance, such as reduced "churning"/thinking. I have seen no difference, except a drop in RAM usage (which as a side effect, could increase performance a bit I guess). Does this correlate with other people's experience? Thanks all!
    Last edited by dbaldacchino; 2007-11-24 at 07:27 PM.

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    Default Re: Managing large projects in Revit

    Didn't see your post Steve (took me a while to write the previous one!). Here's a breakdown of the number of rooms:

    429 L1, Phase1
    152 L1, Phase 2
    59 L2, Phase 1
    177 L2, Phase 2

    That's a total of 817 rooms. Does that come close to the perceived "X"?

    Yes, I have a detached copy saved on my laptop, so I'm experimenting away from the actual project. I don't know if the issue of objects not being assigned to a workset is a side effect of the modeling "mess". Even after cleaning the file as stated above, the workset anomaly still exists. It'll be a bit tricky managing work when we're waiting for support to get back with us. In the meantime, we'll clean the file while Support takes an inital look and then we'll upload the cleaner copy for a final fix.

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    Default Re: Managing large projects in Revit

    My guess is its really a problem in the database. I see the same thing happen sometimes on files early on where we are sloppy in the modeling. Its very hard to figure out what causes it, hopefully support will pinpoint the issue. The room thing seems to be a constant problem for me, a bigger issue now I'm facing is with linked files and schedules that report stuff in the linked files. Talk about slow. its unbelievable. try this, create a single unit with a gross area plan, just one area inside and one exterior. now load this into a project, copy it a bunch of times and produce a gross area schedule. its soooo slow for me and you can't add any data to the schedule at all.

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    Default Re: Managing large projects in Revit

    Quote Originally Posted by dbaldacchino View Post
    There are some other weird things going on in this project, such as objects not assigned to any worksets (field is blank and when you close all worksets, these model elements still show up and stay loaded...filed SR on this). Once that is resolved and I have further news, I'll post back with the findings.

    I'm still curious as to whether breaking down in worksets and only loading select worksets should increase performance, such as reduced "churning"/thinking. I have seen no difference, except a drop in RAM usage (which as a side effect, could increase performance a bit I guess). Does this correlate with other people's experience? Thanks all!
    We've seen model objects end up without a workset and sometimes even on view worksets. Cut and paste to same place seems to resolve these objects.

    Breaking a project into worksets only seems to improve performance when the model itself is broken into several project files first.. each sub model is then linked in... and each linked sub model is put on its own workset. So the answer is by combining linking and worksets you get improved performance on large projects. No one ever explains this very clearly.

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