computer system

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I am tired of waiting for revit and I want it to wait for me for a change.

Can someone recommend a computer system configuration? Please keep it at
least attainable from a local computer supplier.

Why would autodesk reccomend a Intel Core® 2 Duo when revit can't use two
processors. Could a Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor which are made for
servers be used in a revit system? If you can't reccomend a system please
send me the specs of the system you use.

Or is the problem revit, no matter what computer system is designed revit
(program) can't process the information fast enough?

Thank you,
Hunter

[Anonymous]

Hunter,

There are many factors that determine Revits performanc, as there are with any application software.

First, it is not true that Revit does not benefit from a dual core or dual processor chips. Most systems with dual core or dual processors provide load balancing to maximize processor through put for any application running as well as other processes running in the background, such as the OS or other applications you have open at the same time or operations as printing or Internet downloads/uploads.

Second, Accurender is capable of using dual core or dual processors for its operations.

I use a Dell XPS 700 workstation with dual-core 2.93, 4 gigs of RAM with teh 3 Gig switch enabled, an NVidia graphics card with 512 MB of onboard RAM for each of the dual DVI/VGA ports and a 260 Mb SATA 10,000 rpm hard drive. My monitor is a 30" Dell flat panel. Approximate cost of unit 11 months back was $5,500.00.

My largest Revit project file is around 40 Mb and I am never waiting for the system, but it is always waiting for me. I also bought a 24" monitor for my HPZD 8000 notebook for dual monitors and even my HP system provides excellent performance on files up to 25 Mb and is more than adequate on files up to 40 Mb.

I worksets infrequently, but when I do enable worksets my team is only one or two others. I use Design Options at the schematic phase a lot, less frequently during Design-Development phase and virtually never during CD's. Most of my projects involve phasing. I create renderings, but not walk throughs in Revit using Accurender. If the project warrants any serious rendering or animation I use VIZ.

Worksets can decrease performance at your local workstation, because the assignment of components, views and borrowing protocols are being updated across the network to each local machine in the background every cycle.

Design Options also can impact performance due to the increased model components being created in each Design Set scenario.

As I have already stated my workstation performs beautifully and the 30" flat panel monitor reduces the number of display changes, i.e. zooms and pans, required to work.

I am running XP Pro and feel Vista is not ready for me, nor am I ready for Vista. Maybe next year Vista will mature enough to warrant my interest and I will upgrade my workstation along with Autodesk release of true 64 bit Revit solutions.

Mel Persin, AIA
AEC Technology Consultant
Technology to Visualize and Realize Solutions
MasterGraphics, Inc.

[Anonymous]

Mel, are you in Waukesha or Madison?

<%= Clinton Gallagher
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/


wrote in message news:5709061@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hunter,

There are many factors that determine Revits performanc, as there are with
any application software.

First, it is not true that Revit does not benefit from a dual core or dual
processor chips. Most systems with dual core or dual processors provide
load balancing to maximize processor through put for any application running
as well as other processes running in the background, such as the OS or
other applications you have open at the same time or operations as printing
or Internet downloads/uploads.

Second, Accurender is capable of using dual core or dual processors for its
operations.

I use a Dell XPS 700 workstation with dual-core 2.93, 4 gigs of RAM with teh
3 Gig switch enabled, an NVidia graphics card with 512 MB of onboard RAM for
each of the dual DVI/VGA ports and a 260 Mb SATA 10,000 rpm hard drive. My
monitor is a 30" Dell flat panel. Approximate cost of unit 11 months back
was $5,500.00.

My largest Revit project file is around 40 Mb and I am never waiting for the
system, but it is always waiting for me. I also bought a 24" monitor for my
HPZD 8000 notebook for dual monitors and even my HP system provides
excellent performance on files up to 25 Mb and is more than adequate on
files up to 40 Mb.

I worksets infrequently, but when I do enable worksets my team is only one
or two others. I use Design Options at the schematic phase a lot, less
frequently during Design-Development phase and virtually never during CD's.
Most of my projects involve phasing. I create renderings, but not walk
throughs in Revit using Accurender. If the project warrants any serious
rendering or animation I use VIZ.

Worksets can decrease performance at your local workstation, because the
assignment of components, views and borrowing protocols are being updated
across the network to each local machine in the background every cycle.

Design Options also can impact performance due to the increased model
components being created in each Design Set scenario.

As I have already stated my workstation performs beautifully and the 30"
flat panel monitor reduces the number of display changes, i.e. zooms and
pans, required to work.

I am running XP Pro and feel Vista is not ready for me, nor am I ready for
Vista. Maybe next year Vista will mature enough to warrant my interest and
I will upgrade my workstation along with Autodesk release of true 64 bit
Revit solutions.

Mel Persin, AIA
AEC Technology Consultant
Technology to Visualize and Realize Solutions
MasterGraphics, Inc.

[Anonymous]

Clinton,

Neither location Clinton. I am in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. MasterGraphics has five locations including our corporate office in Madison, there is Waukesha and Appleton WI. In Illinois our office is in Rolling Meadows and Minnesota we have an office in Minnetonka.

Any further conversattion we should take off line. My email is mel.persin@masterg.com

Mel Persin, AIA
AEC Technology Consultant
Technology to Visualize and Realize Solutions
MasterGraphics, Inc.

[Anonymous]

Mel - Do you know if they, Autodesk, are working on a 64 bit app, or one
that will take advantage of dual core? It seems funny that Adesk would come
out with a 64 bit ACAD, and then not have 64 bit for verticals of ACAD, that
would take better advantage of more memory allocation. I think the 64 bit
OS has been out for almost 3 years now, if I'm not mistaken.

Cheers Peter.

wrote in message news:5709061@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hunter,

There are many factors that determine Revits performanc, as there are with
any application software.

First, it is not true that Revit does not benefit from a dual core or dual
processor chips. Most systems with dual core or dual processors provide
load balancing to maximize processor through put for any application running
as well as other processes running in the background, such as the OS or
other applications you have open at the same time or operations as printing
or Internet downloads/uploads.

Second, Accurender is capable of using dual core or dual processors for its
operations.

I use a Dell XPS 700 workstation with dual-core 2.93, 4 gigs of RAM with teh
3 Gig switch enabled, an NVidia graphics card with 512 MB of onboard RAM for
each of the dual DVI/VGA ports and a 260 Mb SATA 10,000 rpm hard drive. My
monitor is a 30" Dell flat panel. Approximate cost of unit 11 months back
was $5,500.00.

My largest Revit project file is around 40 Mb and I am never waiting for the
system, but it is always waiting for me. I also bought a 24" monitor for my
HPZD 8000 notebook for dual monitors and even my HP system provides
excellent performance on files up to 25 Mb and is more than adequate on
files up to 40 Mb.

I worksets infrequently, but when I do enable worksets my team is only one
or two others. I use Design Options at the schematic phase a lot, less
frequently during Design-Development phase and virtually never during CD's.
Most of my projects involve phasing. I create renderings, but not walk
throughs in Revit using Accurender. If the project warrants any serious
rendering or animation I use VIZ.

Worksets can decrease performance at your local workstation, because the
assignment of components, views and borrowing protocols are being updated
across the network to each local machine in the background every cycle.

Design Options also can impact performance due to the increased model
components being created in each Design Set scenario.

As I have already stated my workstation performs beautifully and the 30"
flat panel monitor reduces the number of display changes, i.e. zooms and
pans, required to work.

I am running XP Pro and feel Vista is not ready for me, nor am I ready for
Vista. Maybe next year Vista will mature enough to warrant my interest and
I will upgrade my workstation along with Autodesk release of true 64 bit
Revit solutions.

Mel Persin, AIA
AEC Technology Consultant
Technology to Visualize and Realize Solutions
MasterGraphics, Inc.

[Anonymous]

From all my sources and more internet searching here is what I have found.

'A couple of points. 3.2 ghz processor should be plenty as Revit is not very
procesor heavy. The two key things are RAM and Video-card. AT LEAST 2 GB of
RAM is my recommendation, whereas 4GB would be ideal. However. When
companies try to cut costs on machines...the RAM usually gets cut back...so
2GB at least. The video card also should have sufficient memory. Try to get
a card with at least 256 MB of memory on it. Also, try to avoid cards that
are advertised as "Great for Gaming" (GeForce cards) as they are more
focused on raster processing (DirectX...Video Games) instead of Vector
Processing (OpenGL...CAD Systems). I recommend an ATI FireGL card or nVidia
Quadro (the newer models are always better, but another cost issue can
arise). Revit isn't multi-threaded yet, so a dual core processor doesn't
provide any help to Revit (with the exception rendering, AccuRender will use
both cores). However, it will help when running other applications in the
background (email, excel, AutoCAD...). Dual core (even quad core if budget
allows) is recommended. Operating systems: Revit (currently) won't run on a
64 bit system. Maybe in the next release or two... Windows Vista will run
Revit, but only the 32 bit version of Windows. Also, Revit will not run on
Windows Vista Hoime. It has to be a Professional version of Windows Vista.'

Now if I could speed up plotting.........that's a topic for another day.

Hope this helps others trying to efficiently work with Revit.
Hunter

[Anonymous]

Hunter - there are a couple of things that are a little misleading in your
post. REVIT will run on a 64 bit OS. I am running it currently. It runs
in 32 bit mode but runs fine. And in a 64 bit OS, I think, it will allocate
up to 4 Gig per application. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

There has been great debate over the gaming vs workstation cards.
Apparently the high end GeForce cards perform better than the Quadro cards
for quite a bit less money. Search the posts for this information. I am
just about to get a new home computer with a core2Quad processor and a
Geforce 8800 GTX video card, 4 Gig of ram and Win XP 64 bit. I will post my
observations when I have had time to test against my Quadro FX workstation
cards.

I would be interested to see if REVIT performs better on a P4 or other
single core high clock speed computer than a dual core machine with lower
clock speed, but obviously 2 cores. I think there are some aspects of REVIT
that are multithreaded, like ACAD. It is just hard to believe that it would
take this long for ADESK to address this issue considering dual core has
been out for quite sometime and the 64 bit OS even longer!!

Regards Peter.

"Hunter" wrote in message
news:5711950@discussion.autodesk.com...
From all my sources and more internet searching here is what I have found.

'A couple of points. 3.2 ghz processor should be plenty as Revit is not very
procesor heavy. The two key things are RAM and Video-card. AT LEAST 2 GB of
RAM is my recommendation, whereas 4GB would be ideal. However. When
companies try to cut costs on machines...the RAM usually gets cut back...so
2GB at least. The video card also should have sufficient memory. Try to get
a card with at least 256 MB of memory on it. Also, try to avoid cards that
are advertised as "Great for Gaming" (GeForce cards) as they are more
focused on raster processing (DirectX...Video Games) instead of Vector
Processing (OpenGL...CAD Systems). I recommend an ATI FireGL card or nVidia
Quadro (the newer models are always better, but another cost issue can
arise). Revit isn't multi-threaded yet, so a dual core processor doesn't
provide any help to Revit (with the exception rendering, AccuRender will use
both cores). However, it will help when running other applications in the
background (email, excel, AutoCAD...). Dual core (even quad core if budget
allows) is recommended. Operating systems: Revit (currently) won't run on a
64 bit system. Maybe in the next release or two... Windows Vista will run
Revit, but only the 32 bit version of Windows. Also, Revit will not run on
Windows Vista Hoime. It has to be a Professional version of Windows Vista.'

Now if I could speed up plotting.........that's a topic for another day.

Hope this helps others trying to efficiently work with Revit.
Hunter

[Anonymous]

More news.

Intel can not ensure or deny that it's on board video cards in their intel
boards will not work just as good as the Geforce 8800 GTX video card or the
Quadro video cards.

Right now the problem with productivity is revit (software) not the
computers it is installed on.

Hunter

PS yes revit will work on a 64 bit OS it just won't utilize the 64 bit
processing power and could actually be slower.