Is clearing warnings worth it?

[skyeg321]

I found myself in a little debate with a coworker (who is very knowledgeable in Revit) about warnings and whether we should work on clearing them or not. For context, this is about a large 100 unit apartment building architectural model with 2000+ warnings for a project that is already in construction. The warnings are all the usual suspects: Line is slightly off axis, floors overlap, roofs overlap, room separation and walls overlap etc.

My question is - what are the actual negatives caused by warnings aside from the model looking bad or the company looking unprofessional. Is it increased load times? If so by how much? Increased save or sync times? Can these be quantified? Is the model more likely to crash? I'd like to fully understand the costs associated with ignoring warnings so we evaluate whether spending project hours on fixing them is really worth it. Or, if we should just try to get through this project and tell people not to ignore warnings as they come up next time. Or maybe there are some warnings that should be fixed, and others that shouldn't?  Thoughts?

[syman2000]

Quick answer is yes.

Think of Revit like a machine part that need constant maintenance. If you refuse to maintain the machine part, it will get worst and worst until it falls apart.

[HVAC-Novice]

YMMV

My threshold for correcting things and making things "actually true" is

- if the project has already been bid out (and i somehow made the plans look good enough) i leave it as is and just make sure to implement improvements and pay more attention for future projects inc. the ones not bid yet.

- if it hasn't bid yet, I try to propagate better practices to all projects currently under design to the greatest extent possible. It is a judgment call sometimes. If it doesn't matter for the actual bid document (like your floors overlapping, but the sheets look correct), I also may let it go.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We only have so much time and deadlines. Sometimes things are just not 100% text-book style. just make sure to not repeat the same mistakes for new projects. 

So for the next project, fight those warnings right away before you have 2000. You also don't want to re-issue new sheets if they don't actually change anything. More confusion =/= better real life construction.

[andybrack]

My two cents...yes, the Warnings matter. They result in slower Synch times. So the issue becomes more impactful the larger the project size.

But should you really clean them up? That's where you have to make a judgment call. In some cases Warnings can bring a project file to a grinding halt, causing instability, and therefore more frequent crashing.  For example, I recently had a project for a high rise multi-family building that stemmed from Groups of Curtain Wall being copied over themselves. Revit started crashing regularly for the team. I investigated and found in excess of 2 million Warnings. Yes, you saw that right.  The solution was simple, get rid of the overlapping elements. They were a mistake anyway, but it impacted the project in a huge way.  This is example is an extreme, but proves the point that Warnings matter. A little housekeeping once in a while goes a long way!

[RobDraw]

@andybrack,

Well put!

[SteveKStafford]

This is my personal priority dealing with warnings. Resolve as many as possible that:

• Affect calculations, rooms/areas & wall/boundary errors
• Involve redundancy/Duplication (multiple elements in the same place)
• Affect documentation - Type Marks/Marks/tagging accuracy

A team needs to know they exist and why they are there. The quantity of them varies wildly as a design evolves. If the team is aware and tracking them then they don't turn into thousands of errors that negatively affect the project. The best time to fix a warning is when it pops up on screen the first time. The second best time is now but it will likely be more difficult to parse and resolve.

[HVAC-Novice]

This thread just gave me motivation to eliminate all warnings in my current project. Took me a bit to correct all, but I feel better now. 

One thing I noticed is that many of the errors were the same type and if I would have paid attention to the first one, I may not have made the consecutive same errors. So really, eliminate them right away. I can't imagine how long it takes to eliminate 2,000. 

Now I'm curious if all the threads here that are related to crashes, performance, or other issues are based on neglected warnings? It never occurred to me to ask the user asking for help how the warnings situation looks like. 

[SteveKStafford]

Good for you and your project!

---

@HVAC-Novice wrote:

Now I'm curious if all the threads here that are related to crashes, performance, or other issues are based on neglected warnings? It never occurred to me to ask the user asking for help how the warnings situation looks like. 

---

One of the first things Autodesk support will recommend is resolving warnings to rule out their possible contribution to whatever issue is being reported, unless truly irrelevant.

[skyeg321]

Thanks everyone. Its really good to hear stories like that @andybrack. It sounds like warnings are not created equal and I really want to prioritize warnings that cause crashing, which sounds like duplicate families over each other. I wonder if crash reports contain info about what caused the crash?? Thanks @SteveKStafford for your hierarchy/prioritizations - very helpful. 

[SteveKStafford]

I haven't encountered serious file issues because of duplicate elements (Identical instances in the same place). It does affect quantities though, if anyone cares about how many things there are in the project. For example, an interiors firm that needs/wants to provide a bill of materials for purchasing...it probably matters a lot.

The most offensive warnings are those that affect ongoing calculations like room/space/area bounding. Every time you adjust or change a wall, room separator, area boundary, ceiling, roof ... you get the idea, Revit is calculating area at least and possibly volume (if turned on). The more warnings related to this the more CPU cycles you steal from yourselves.

I've also seen projects that get unstable when there are many overlapping floors (vertically and/or sketch perimeters). I've seen Enscape refuse to do a render of a view until all the floor overlapping warnings were eliminated.

DWG files with content or extent issues delay file opening too, a warning dialog must be cleared. For example, people often start the open file process and leave to get some coffee while the file opens...and are greeted with a warning when they return, lost time. So if there is a warning associated with any DWG/imports it is worth examining.

Shorter answer...not all warnings are equal but when they accumulate they all contribute to noise in the model that Revit must contend with in some way as we work.

Edit: I'll add this... I don't stress out over <200 warnings depending on the status of the project's development. I do however look for patterns. Many warnings are an indication of training gaps. When I see a lot of floors overlapping I know that this team isn't thinking in 3D (vertical adjustments for finish floors) or that they are being sloppy with sketches of floor layouts which are quite often floors being used for site modeling. If I see a lot of room separator errors I know this team is using them like band-aids to fix room bounding issues with their wall layouts. I'd guess that 80% are entirely avoidable (training/habits/care), 10-15% are Revit's fault and 5-10% are unavoidable...