Tag: performance

14 Must Read GoodRevit Tips for Productivity and Performance

Luke Johnson

A while back I started using the hashtag GoodRevit to share workflow tips that I’ve found useful when working in large teams and on large projects. Here are some of those tweets:

Do you have any tips for Good Revit? Join the hashtag, or freel free to comment at this post.

Tracking, Logging and Reporting Revit Model Performance

Luke Johnson

Simon Moreau has put together and shared some API code that allows him to track the time taken to open and work with Revit models. I can see this would be a good way to identify “problem” Revit central files that were taking a long time for users to sync. Once the problem models are identified, they could be fixed, and people might be happy 🙂

From bim42:
It is now possible to quickly create very precise graph displaying opening time of different model, compare them and show their evolution along time


from
http://bim42.com/2014/07/revit-tracking/

Performance Tips for Working with Very Large Datasets in Navisworks

Luke Johnson

When working across an entire healthcare facility and clashing combined NWDs, Navisworks may slow down to a crawl (we are talking single instance using 10gb RAM or more). Here are some tips to improve stability:

  • Make a “safe” home viewpoint inside a room somewhere, that won’t force Navis to draw the entire dataset in one window, and set some of the following as part of that viewpoint…
  • use Shaded View, not Full Render
  • Lights – Headlight
  • Don’t try and use Appearance Profiler if your dataset is large and your Appearance-related Search Sets are not at file level
  • When in Clash Detective, you can use the automatic Item 1 and 2 Highlighting instead of Appearances to visually examine clashing items
  • File Options – Clipping Planes – Near – Fixed at 0.1
  • File Options – Clipping Planes – Far- Fixed at 100 (or less if necessary)
  • Use Selection Tree instead of highly processor intensive Search Sets when possible
  • When appending a new model to an already huge dataset, you might get better results if you use the Project Browser. Import Sheets and Models -> bring the new model in and then after opening it and having a look, Append this model to your main model by right clicking in the Project Browser

Finally, I have found Navisworks 2015 to be much smoother and more reliable than previous versions. You can upgrade to 2015 and still downsave to 2013 for projects that require you to do so.

    Model Performance Technical Note – updated for Revit 2014

    Luke Johnson
    Info:

    The Revit platform’s performance can depend as much on the knowledge, skill, and practices of its users as on the hardware environment provided for the software. To address both of these areas, the Revit platform team has assembled this collection of hardware requirements, recommendations, and modeling best practices as researched by both internal development and our community of dedicated customers.
    Model Performance Technical Note (pdf – 973Kb)

    More whitepapers at:

    Should a video card for Revit cost $100 or $1000?

    Luke Johnson

    RFO Co-founder iru69 recently (14 October) updated his very detailed post on video cards and Revit at:

    Revit Hardware : Video Graphic Cards

    I recommend that you read this prior to investing in a new graphics card for use with Revit.

    The post even includes an FAQ section – here is a little sample:

    “Autodesk/my reseller/unnamed CAD expert says I should only use “Professional” (workstation/CAD) cards with Revit. But then I read here that lots of people use and recommend “Gaming” cards for Revit. Who is right?”
    Despite what you may have been told, consumer (gaming) video cards can work just as well with Revit as professional video cards.

    “Someone told me that SLI or CrossFire will double the speed!”
    SLI and CrossFire are great for the latest video games, but it’s of no use at all for Revit. At least it’s never been demonstrated. If you want to give it a try, be my guest. 😉

    Don’t forget about Autodesk’s recommended hardware list page:
    http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?id=18844534&siteID=123112

    Useful hardware utilities

    Luke Johnson

    Here are a couple of system utilities that may help you to squeeze maximum performance out of your hardware (to speed up Revit, of course).  Actually, my FX580 was struggling a bit with Showcase, so I wanted to overclock it a bit to make the augmented reality plugin work a bit more smoothly…

    GPU-Z is a handy information tool for your video card.  If you are overclocking, it will tell you the current clock speed, as well as the default.  It will also tell you the driver and Forceware version that you are running, as well as additional advanced performance information.

    Download TechPowerUp GPU-Z v0.6.4 | techPowerUp

    (also, if you are overclocking a GPU, check out hwbot – it will give you an idea of the average overclock you can achieve using air cooling only for a given GPU model)

    Core Temp will give you advanced processor information, including temperature and load for each core on your CPU.

    Dev Eject will help you remove USB devices safely, even if Windows is struggling to do so.

    Revit Hardware and Performance tips (mid-year 2012)

    Luke Johnson

    Here are a few interesting (and in some cases controversial) quotes from new Revit blogger, the Pragmatic Reviteer.
    ”
    CPU – single threaded speed is the most important thing.


    In my experience, the main key is that there is simply no need or value in “professional” grade cards like the Quadro and FireGl/FirePro series.


    For the next few years, Windows 7 x64 is a safe bet for all non tablet needs, especially for Revit use.


    Gigabit Ethernet is a must
    “
    Read more at:
    Infrastructure Requirements Increase | the Pragmatic Reviteer

    I have posted about hardware a few times, but some of my posts may be showing their age:
    What Revit Wants: Revit Hardware

    What Revit Wants: Revit Hardware – compatibility and performance

    Faster Revit application load time for free

    Luke Johnson

    Cool tip from The Revit Convert on how to skip the splash screen and speed up the loading time of your Revit.exe.  Just right-click on your Revit shortcut icon and go to Properties, then:

    From the Properties palette and in the Target box, go to the very end of that long sequence and add {spacebar}/nosplash  (after the ” marks, not inside them) (please do not type {spacebar}, that is just my indication that you use the space bar) 

    Read more at:
    Want to (slightly) speed up Revit? � The Revit Convert

    Hack for Revit 2013 emulated Hardware Acceleration in Parallels or VMWare Fusion

    Luke Johnson

    From Gordon Price on RFO:

    Go to the Revit program folder (C:Program FilesAutodeskRevit Architecture 2013Program for RAC) and look for a file called AdskHardwareCertificationReport.xml. Rename this file AdskHardwareCertificationReport.xml.OOTB and accept the warning about changing file extensions. You will now be able to enable Hardware Acceleration just like you did in 2012. Performance will not be as good as direct graphics hardware, but it will be much faster than WARP.

    via
    Revit on the Mac (OS X) – Page 6

    Read the whole thread if you want to understand some of the limitations and risks of this method.