Revit management questiont?

[Anonymous]

We are looking to start implementing Revit into our office and was told
yesterday that there may be issues on the large size of the files produced
by the program. Are any of you using Revit? And if so, are the file sizes
that big? (we are looking at it for multifamily type projects, 2-5 stories,
10-50 units) The main reason I am asking this is that we are having to look
at increasing the storage capacity of our server, and I don't want to be
left short.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

pound for pound (or byte for byte 🙂 ) the file sizes in Revit are roughly
equivalent to the same sized AutoCAD based project folder. Since Revit is
one file, and AutoCAD projects are multi-file, we've found overall storage
requirements to be about the same.

With that said, we have Revit projects from 15 megs to 100 megs in size.

"John B" wrote in message
news:5132829@discussion.autodesk.com...
We are looking to start implementing Revit into our office and was told
yesterday that there may be issues on the large size of the files produced
by the program. Are any of you using Revit? And if so, are the file sizes
that big? (we are looking at it for multifamily type projects, 2-5 stories,
10-50 units) The main reason I am asking this is that we are having to look
at increasing the storage capacity of our server, and I don't want to be
left short.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Just echoing what Scott is seeing at his company.

Brian Beck
CAD Manager
Rainforth Grau Architects

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much for the info.


"John B" wrote in message
news:5132829@discussion.autodesk.com...
We are looking to start implementing Revit into our office and was told
yesterday that there may be issues on the large size of the files produced
by the program. Are any of you using Revit? And if so, are the file sizes
that big? (we are looking at it for multifamily type projects, 2-5 stories,
10-50 units) The main reason I am asking this is that we are having to look
at increasing the storage capacity of our server, and I don't want to be
left short.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

how many square feet of project per meg, on average?

--
Princess Jamie,

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin

"Scott Davis" wrote in message news:5132984@discussion.autodesk.com...
pound for pound (or byte for byte 🙂 ) the file sizes in Revit are roughly
equivalent to the same sized AutoCAD based project folder. Since Revit is
one file, and AutoCAD projects are multi-file, we've found overall storage
requirements to be about the same.

With that said, we have Revit projects from 15 megs to 100 megs in size.

"John B" wrote in message
news:5132829@discussion.autodesk.com...
We are looking to start implementing Revit into our office and was told
yesterday that there may be issues on the large size of the files produced
by the program. Are any of you using Revit? And if so, are the file sizes
that big? (we are looking at it for multifamily type projects, 2-5 stories,
10-50 units) The main reason I am asking this is that we are having to look
at increasing the storage capacity of our server, and I don't want to be
left short.

Thanks

[AlmightySR]

If you take all the documentation that accures that revit replaces XLS, DWG,
and such, the revit file is probably smaller. But at the least we have
found the one revit file to be the same size as all DWGs involved in the
project


"John B" wrote in message
news:5132829@discussion.autodesk.com...
We are looking to start implementing Revit into our office and was told
yesterday that there may be issues on the large size of the files produced
by the program. Are any of you using Revit? And if so, are the file sizes
that big? (we are looking at it for multifamily type projects, 2-5 stories,
10-50 units) The main reason I am asking this is that we are having to look
at increasing the storage capacity of our server, and I don't want to be
left short.

Thanks

[jlspartz]

It really depends on the families you load into the project.

[Anonymous]

surely there's a gross average

--
Princess Jamie,

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin

wrote in message news:5134685@discussion.autodesk.com...
It really depends on the families you load into the project.

[Anonymous]

Never really looked into it that way. It should matter how much info is in
the file. I could have a "basic" set of drawings, and have a 20 meg file,
or have an "over-the-top" set of drawings with 3D views and shade and
shadow, and have a 50 meg file for the same square footage.

"PJ" wrote in message
news:5135215@discussion.autodesk.com...
surely there's a gross average

--
Princess Jamie,

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin

wrote in message news:5134685@discussion.autodesk.com...
It really depends on the families you load into the project.

[Anonymous]

assuming no shading - how big would the file for a 200,000 sq ft hospital be?

--
Princess Jamie,

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin

"Scott Davis" wrote in message news:5135946@discussion.autodesk.com...
Never really looked into it that way. It should matter how much info is in
the file. I could have a "basic" set of drawings, and have a 20 meg file,
or have an "over-the-top" set of drawings with 3D views and shade and
shadow, and have a 50 meg file for the same square footage.

"PJ" wrote in message
news:5135215@discussion.autodesk.com...
surely there's a gross average

--
Princess Jamie,

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin

wrote in message news:5134685@discussion.autodesk.com...
It really depends on the families you load into the project.

[Anonymous]

With only 4 Revit projects under my belt I'm not the best case study for real world averages but I can make some educated predictions. We are an architectural firm that specializes in educational facilities. Some of our projects can get large in scope. In the late 80's I was with a firm that did the drawings for some military base hospitals, Clark AFB in the Philippines comes to mind. I know that these drawings can get large fast, interior elevations of every wall with all of the equipment located, etc. I'm fairly confident that I could make any project in Revit match directory size with a similar effort in AutoCAD.
The trick is it takes more of a concerted effort to not over model things in Revit, just because you can. I've tried to emphasize to my staff here that we only fully model areas where there may be construction issues or client concerns. How can I best describe this? For instance, do we need to fully model the water closet in 3D or do we just need a Revit family with correct linework in all views, "multi-view block"?
An area where Revit can help reduce directory size is in it's ability to handle design options. I've seen many designers/intern architects make multiple copies of an entire AutoCAD file just to experiment with different design conditions. In the end, in my mind it all comes down to staff training. Not really answering your question directly PJ, but I think I can safely estimate that directory space on a server will be relatively the same for either application as far as construction documents are concerned.
I can't respond to any comments about what happens when you start rendering in Revit and file size. However, we currently take our AutoCAD drawings into Archicad, then into Photoshop. Those directories bloat up fast.
Not trying to get anyone to march to a specific drummer, just trying to answer questions based upon my limited Revit experience so far.

Brian Beck
CAD Manager
Rainforth Grau Architects

[Anonymous]

We are working on our first revit project and we are finding out that revit creates some rather large log files. I am removing them from the server on a daily basis. I have been keeping track of this...
1st month 1.1gb
2nd month 4.14gb
3rd month 1.13gb
That's a lot of memory!

[JeffreyMcGrew]

That would depend a lot on three things:

1. How many raster images you've got imported into your set.
2. How many DWG files you've got imported into your set.
3. How much 3D information you've got within your Revit Families within the Project.

The way that Revit works is that individual instances of elements are just references of the same Family Type. Just like Blocks in AutoCAD. So I could have one chair, or a thousand, and my filesize will remain the same. But if I have a thousand different chairs, of different levels of 3D detail, the file would be much, much larger.

So, for example, a shopping mall or warehouse (or office tower) that's 90% repetitive elements could have a much smaller file size than a smaller but way more custom multi-family housing complex where only %20 of it is repetitive, and everything else is custom.

So, in other words, I don't think anyone here will be able to answer your questions. Every time something Revit comes up, you chime in with Hospital questions, and I don't think anyone who's doing that kind of work hangs out here sadly. Maybe you should try a pilot, or try to find a firm doing hospital work and using Revit via a reseller or Autodesk to get better answers to your questions.

But, I've seen models way, way more complex than what can be done in AutoCAD, ADT, or Max done in Revit. Take the same model, export it from Revit to DWG, and it makes the same machine crawl when opened in anything else due to number of faces of elements. I was working on a (really) huge project the other week, where half is in Revit and half is in ADT 2004, and the ADT filesizes were way, way more frightening than the Revit ones (and those ADT models weren't nearly as complex, just walls and windows and such).

A very rough rule of thumb I've found over the last five years or so works well is that whatever DWG's it takes to deliver a project, added all togther, will be about the same to 10% larger than the equivalent Revit file that it would take to deliver the same project. It's a fast-and-dirty rule, so it's not perfect, but it seems to work.

But what seems to add bloat the fastest is importing in raster images and DWG's FYI.

[JeffreyMcGrew]

yeah, the much bigger worry in filesizes re: Revit isn't the size of the Project files themselves.

Revit makes a fair amount of backup files and logs and journals and whatnot. That extra stuff needs to be managed. Turning down the number of backups Revit makes is a great place to start. AutoCAD/ADT only makes one .bak file, Revit's default is four. Four times 10-40 megs really adds up fast. Also, on workset projects, the default is 20 (!) backups, and it will save that for each user's individual backups in the same spot as wherever they put their local files, so again turn those down. If you've got a good backup policy in place (like we do) then you can turn them way down, and save a lot of space.

As for the journal files, you can also turn those down. The default is to keep the last 10, I've rarely needed more than the last two or three, really. Or set up the same kind of auto-cleaners for the Revit backups and journals like we've all got for AutoCAD, and everything's fine.

But again, the bigger thing to manage with Revit in regards to disk space is this kind of stuff. The Project files tend to be less demanding than ADT or MAX. It's just that it's all in one file, so there can be a bit of 'sticker shock' at times. 🙂