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Ten Best Practices For Better Revit Performance

HP and technology consultants CASE have examined Revit's performance. These 10 pointers will help you make your models and workflows work harder, smarter, and more efficiently for you. Don't explode CAD drawings into families in revit, never explode an AutoCAD file.

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Nilay Desai
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236 views

Ten Best Practices For Better Revit Performance

HP and technology consultants CASE have examined Revit's performance. These 10 pointers will help you make your models and workflows work harder, smarter, and more efficiently for you. Don't explode CAD drawings into families in revit, never explode an AutoCAD file.

Uploaded by

Nilay Desai
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Ten Best Practices for Better Revit

Performance

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No matter how skilled you are at using Revit to model, analyze, and represent your
design, software performance is key to maximizing the power of the program. Slow
syncs, sluggish openings, and jittery model displays that come with big, complex files
can cause frustrating and time-wasting delays. HP and technology consultants
CASE have examined Revits performance HP through its HP Performance
Advisor tool, and CASE through the auditing of BIM models for AECO clients and
developed a series of recommended practices. These 10 pointers will help you make
your models and workflows work harder, smarter, and more efficiently for you.
1. Use elevation and section far clip
To reduce the data processed in generating your drawings, each section and elevation should
have a far clip active and set so that it only extends far enough for the correct information to
show in the drawing. This will also help make startup times shorter.
2. Minimize DWG imports
DWG are one of the main causes of increased file sizes and reduced model performance.
Minimize DWG links and imports by using them only for reference and then remove them
once Revit elements have been generated.
3. Don't explode CAD drawings into families
In Revit, never explode an AutoCAD file. Even when deleted, each XREF is treated as an
imported symbol, adding extra data to the file and reducing performance. If you must explode
a file, purge XREFs first, and remember to use purge unused often when in Revit, to get rid
of extraneous files. Use CASE's Import from File tool to import to a separate Revit file and

remove ?rogue/rouge? line styles using the programs "Change and Replace Linestyle" tool to
purge the family, and then load it into your active project.
4. Remove unused options and views
Even when inactive and invisible, design options can slow the model since they all have to
update with changes. For a cleaner model, remove any unused design options. Similarly,
unplaced views add data to the file and contribute to slow model performance and large file
sizes. Purge views often.

5. Eliminate unused families


It sounds like something the mafia would do. Revit families that are removed from the model
still contribute to the file size. To increase performance, purge unused families often so it is
easier to remember which ones should go. Also, only remove the families and not the types,
which can be hard to reintroduce once erased.
6. Use model lines sparingly
Use model lines sparingly, since they are easily mistaken for a drawing error in other views.
Where possible, replace model lines with detail lines.
7. Use room separation lines
Room separation lines help divide rooms where no other bounding object is present.
However, be careful. When these lines begin to overlap with other bounding objects, such as
walls and columns, they will cause errors. The use of room separation lines should be
minimized as much as possible by using room bounding elements whenever appropriate.
8. Worksets
Using worksets more elegantly can vastly improve your workflow. Make it easy to see which
links have been opened by placing Revit links into separate worksets. Keep the model wellstructured by breaking it into bite-sized worksets. Create a 3D view for each workset and
name it workset worksetname" (using your own title for worksetname), and set the
visibility graphics for each 3D workset view to isolate the workset. This makes it easy to
keep track of what is in a workset. Alternatively, you can use the CASE workset browser to
visualize worksets.

9. Avoid excessive 3D model detail

If Revit families grow too detailed, model display performance can be impacted, especially
on larger projects. When highly detailed models are required, create high and low detail
versions of the family. Use family type parameters to switch between these versions
depending on the output need. Low detail versions should be extremely simple (just a
bounding box that accurately depicts the shape and size), and its visibility parameters turned
off. The high detail versions can be temporarily switched for visualization and exporting.
10. Get performance advice
Use HP Performance Advisor to fine-tune your workstation without the IT department. The
program can help with everything from the temperature of your computer, to your current
GPU usage, to the RAM utilization of applications. Installing the latest graphics drivers,
optimizing system and bios settings and finding diagnostic information can all help improve
performance. Performance Advisor is included with HP Z Workstations featuring Intel
Xeon and Intel Core processors.
Editors note: The tips in this article were originally developed by CASE with HP and Intel.
The original article can be found here.

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