The Revit Accelerator for C4R. How does it work?

[Anonymous]

Hi ADSK,

me and some of our clients have been wondering how the Revit, Personal Accelerator works?

I am having a hard time finding any documentation on. My guess would be that it is a services caching data in the background.

How does it effect performance and how does it work function on WAN/LAN?

Thank you in advance for any info on this

Br

Mikkel

[corkybenle2]

Think of the Revit Accelerator for C4R as a "mini Revit Server" on each workstation that caches the data to allow for speedier file transfer.  The speed of the data transferring back and forth from the workstation to the C4R main Revit Central Model is dependent upon your WAN/LAN speed.

A360 C4R allows for multiple simultaneous upload/download of data from workstations to central model.

[KyleB_Autodesk · Accepted solution]

The Revit Accelerator pre-fetches "deltas" as the model changes, so the Revit application has them cached locally when it needs to integrate them into the local cache, as opposed to downloading them during the intergration transaction.  The nitty gritty of the file access flow can be seen here.

-Kyle

[Anonymous]

Hi Kyle thank you for the information above.

A couple of questions to the model, when does the different syncs execute...? All the time?

So it will always be an updated model of all diciplines, in rvt or linked rvt files?

What does the central file cache do? control permissions or is that in the element stream?

Also, how should we control project releases within C4R?

Thanks

//Mikkel

[KyleB_Autodesk]

---

mv wrote: 

A couple of questions to the model, when does the different syncs execute...? All the time?

---

The Revit Accelerator is a system-level process that runs independently of Revit.  The pre-fetching of the deltas happens as soon as they are commited to the Cloud Worksharing service, after which they sit locally on the machine until Revit merges them into the existing locally cached RVT during model open/reload link commands.

---

mv wrote:

So it will always be an updated model of all diciplines, in rvt or linked rvt files?

What does the central file cache do? control permissions or is that in the element stream?

---

Correct, the lastest version of all models will be available to the C4R user, in both the host model + linked models.  The central cache exists purely to make the "merge" operatio happen about 20% faster than if it didn't exist.  One of our underlying assumptions for the C4R architecture is that employee's time is much more valuable than incremental hardware spend, so we optimize for employee productivity over hard drive consumption, if we need to choose.  This is an example of that.

---

mv wrote: 

Also, how should we control project releases within C4R?

---

The cloud worksharing workflows enabled by the C4R product are targeted towards highly collaborative multi-firm project teams.  In that type of workflow, there aren't "releases", per se, between teams.  Instead, everybody's working together on the latest versions of each-other's work, and communicating as things change.  We fully realize that there are plenty of projects where that type of workflow is not ideal, and we're working to evolve the cloud worksharing workflows to deliver a more controlled flow of data between teams.  I had a conversation about this over on another thread if you want to learn more about that.

Cheers,

Kyle

[callumf]

I have a few questions about the C4R personal accelerator that arent addressed above, and it seems this is the best place to ask them. We are using C4R alot, but I have no visibility on the status of our personal accelerators:

- The personal accelerator installed with C4R, does it run automatically when I open a C4R file? 

- How can I check on the status of the accelerator? Or do I not need to?

- My Revit Server info currently says there is no accelerator, but Im still using C4R. Should this say that Im using the personal accelerator?

- If it runs automatically, is it going the way of local files in the sense of it becoming an invisible service that needs to user tweaking?

[KyleB_Autodesk]

---

@callumf wrote:

I have a few questions about the C4R personal accelerator that arent addressed above, and it seems this is the best place to ask them. We are using C4R alot, but I have no visibility on the status of our personal accelerators:

- The personal accelerator installed with C4R, does it run automatically when I open a C4R file? 

- How can I check on the status of the accelerator? Or do I not need to?

- My Revit Server info currently says there is no accelerator, but Im still using C4R. Should this say that Im using the personal accelerator?

- If it runs automatically, is it going the way of local files in the sense of it becoming an invisible service that needs to user tweaking?

---

• It runs automatically when the Windows OS loads.  When it does its job, it has already pre-fetched the necessary information before the Model Open command.  So while it's technically running during Model Open or SWC, the important part is that it's been running before the operations are carried out.
• You shouldn't need to check status, but if you want to confirm it's running, just look for "Revit Accelerator" in the "Background processes" section of the Windows Task Manager:

• The accelerator settings you mention are unique to Revit Server workflows, so you won't see anything there specific to cloud worksharing.
• There's no user tweaking required.  It's design to "just work".

-Kyle

[MiWolff]

I assume C4R is short for Collaboration for Revit. If that is true, can we safely uninstall 'Personal Accelerator for Revit' if we never use B360 cloud space? Is it necessary for central file or Revit Server collaboration?

Best wishes,

Michael