Revit Architecture and CPUs

[Anonymous]

Good day all,

Having poured over message boards and blogs, I've come to the conclusion all the answers are not in one place. ; )

I am trying to update hardware to run Revit Arch. much faster for rendering.  In looking at 2011 and 2012, I have a question on what will actually speed up rendering and stop BSODs.

How many CPUs will Revit 2011 and 2012 use?  2 max or 4?

How many cores will it use?  Is a dual processor, dual core better than a quad or six-way core?  If dual processor, six-way core, will it use all 12 cores for rendering?

How does RAM work with the rendering?  Will it use all 6 Gbs, 8Gbs, or 12 Gbs?

Also, will 2012 start using the GPU?

What are the views of a Tesla card?  Looking at Nvidia's site, it calls it a GPU, but I am novit sure if Revit will benefit from it.

I have been having problems with 2010 64-bit and rendering of large views (>4 Mbs using both interior lights and exterior sunlight.) at high.  This plus antivirus is all that is running (Nvidia Quadro 2000 with updated drivers,  XP-64 with all patches and current firmware).  So this leads to the question of looking forward for a better solution.

Thank you in advance for any assistance.

[DarrenP]

rendering in revit 2011 uses as many processors as your computer has weather iits 2 core 3 core 6 core or 12 core or dual 6 cores revit 2011 and higher will use it when rendering. Revit 2011 uses the graphics card to display lighting and material in the viewport. As for as ram autodesk recommeds at least 8 gigs to run revit when rendering the processor is going to be used more than the ram so revit won't use all 8 gigs to render

As far as the graphics cards autodesk has a supported list of graphic cards: http://www.autodesk.com/us/revit/revit_graphics_hardware_list_June02.html

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info.

Do you have any information on the Tesla card?.I am trying to understand if Revit will use it, or just view it as a GPU and disregard it?

Have a great weekend all.

[DarrenP]

revit probably won't use a tesla card

revit will only the processor and ram for rendering just stick with a quadro fx card

you can go here for more info on tesla: http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_computing_solutions.html

you may want to start looking at Autodesk 3ds Max for rendering

[DarrenP]

heres more on 3ds Max and iray: http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-3ds-max.html 

which will use the tesla cards

[Anonymous]

Darren,

Thanks for the info.

A question I have not found a true answer on is will Revit rendering use a second CPU on a dual processor (not just dual core) workstation.  I am trying to determinie if it is worth investing in a workstation with dual sockets and dual CPUs or taking that money and put it to a faster, higher core count, processor.

Anyone have experience running Revit on a dual processor workstation and checking to see if the second processor is being taxed by the fbxooprender.exe process?  I have seen the program use all threads in a processor.

Thank you all for your help.

[DarrenP]

it should

[Anonymous]

Darren,

Thanks for the response.  I have looked at the marketing info and yes it hints that it should.  The problem I am finding is anyone to say yes I have a dual processor workstation and it does use both processors for rendering.  I know it will use both processors for all the other items, but rendering is the important aspect.

Thanks for your insight.

[DarrenP]

i can't honestly say it will take advantage of multi processors for rendering

i have a multicore system not a multi processor system

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

After several months of conversing with PC manufacturers, the bottom line is Revit does not use a GPU to render.  Revit is using it's own rendering engine.  The engine will only use a limited number of cores.  So, the more cores you have (to move work OS and other applciations off) the better Revit will tun.  The Revit engine uses up-to 4 cores/threads for rendering.  If cores arl limitede, then the faster the processor, the better.  You can balance number of cores with speed if the number of cores is greater than 4.

At this time, I have not heard of Autodesk moving away from the Revit rendering engine to one that uses a GPU.  Thank you all for reviewing this information.

[DarrenP]

autodesk changed this for revit 2011 it will use multi cores/processors to render

it doesn't use the gpu at all for rendering

[Anonymous]

Darren,

The information provided was that the rendering is still limited to a set number of cores/threads.  The more memory available (~20 times the size of the main file; not the view) will help in the rendering running faster.  In our situation, 500MB files are needing 10GB in memory.  We have verified this.  We have also confirmed that for smaller views (under 5MB) only needed 3 cores/threads to complete.

Revit itself can use more.

The suggestion for rendering was to import the views into 3D Max and let it use the GPU.

Thanks.

[DarrenP]

understood

max also lets you set up a render farm

with revit you can't soft of

[Anonymous]

thanks, this thread answered all my questions and answers I found over the web regarding the graphic cards for CAD.

[Anonymous]

What about Point Cloud processing?  I notice that Revit only engages (1) cpu of my (8) when I pan, zoom and rotate.  Seems like Revit should have the capability to engage all cores.  Correct?

Tyler

[loboarch]

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@Anonymous wrote:

What about Point Cloud processing?  I notice that Revit only engages (1) cpu of my (8) when I pan, zoom and rotate.  Seems like Revit should have the capability to engage all cores.  Correct?

Tyler

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Here is a page at the Revit wikihelp listing all of the multithreaded processes in Revit.

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Revit/enu/Community/Tips_and_Tricks/Performance/Multithreaded_Processes_in_Revit

Point cloud processing is on the list but pan/zoom and rotate are not on the list.

Because of the parametric nature of Revit some actions within it are difficult to make into multithreaded tasks and others are easier.