Revit Hardware Benchmark

Every CAD or BIM user I talk to is in the same boat. The struggle and fight with their IT department to spend for adequate hardware. IT departments, tasked with keeping down budgets and slowing hardware refresh times simply go to the software vendors web site and look at minimum and recommended specs. Take for example, Autodesk’s requirements for Revit 2019…

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Revit-2019-products.html

What most don’t know is that these specifications are typically based on what most customers are using. If most customers are using low quality hardware, the recommendations will also be low quality hardware. Requirements and recommendation also typically don’t reflect what you’re doing….2d drafting or rendering for example.  

Autodesk has gotten better about listed recommendations for large and small data sets, but it’s still doesn’t give you a good picture of what’s going on.

One this you can do is run some bench marking on your systems. This is typically an automated process that runs your system through various activities and ranks it based on the time to perform those tasks.

For Revit, a sharp guy named Gordon Price has helped develop a set of Benchmarking utilities for Revit. They’re posted to https://www.revitforum.org for free download and posting feedback. 

You can download the utilities from this page…

https://www.revitforum.org/hardware-infrastructure/35955-rfo-benchmark-v3-x.html

I’ve got to say, I anticipated having to fuss a bunch, re-configuring support folders, repathing files and such. To my surprise, it was very simple. Like, extract the files to a folder, read the README.TXT file to understand what the various benchmark options were then click the shortcut. 

You can get a little more advanced and have the benchmark assemble the results to a network location so you can benchmark all your machines and keep all the data on one place. But if you want to just run a simple benchmark, it’s very easy to do so although running the Expanded benchmark can take hours as it’s pretty exhaustive.

When you’re done, you get a text file summary of your particular systems results, Here’s a sample of data from my laptop….not very impressive but it’ not my primary system, just for home.travel use.

RVT 2019 - Full_Simplified set - 2018.10.06 @ 08.23.24 on MYCOMPUTER.txt
RFO Benchmark v3.2 (build 01.05.2018)
RevitForum.org

All times are in seconds, lower is better.

Run on Revit 2019.1
____________________________________________________ Model creation benchmark
16.46 opening and loading the custom template
20.78 creating the floors levels and grids
32.13 creating a group of walls and doors
52.27 modifying the group by adding a curtain wall
19.79 creating the exterior curtain wall
15.05 creating the sections
6.79 changing the curtain wall panel type
25.36 creating area plans
3.61 creating and applying view template
192.24 TOTAL
____________________________________________________ Graphics
7.99 activate View Styles view
4.17 change view to Wireframe
0.21 change view to Hidden
0.67 change view to Shaded
0.87 change view to Consistent Colors
0.66 change view to Realistic
3.01 refresh Wireframe Line view x10
9.24 refresh Hidden Line view x10
9.50 refresh Shaded view x10
8.91 refresh Consistent Colors view x10
10.77 refresh Realistic view x10
0.84 activate View Cube view
5.96 rotate view x1
62.80 TOTAL
Notes:
Graphics benchmark measures the entire graphics stack, which includes CPU and memory.
To meaningfully compare graphics cards, test all cards in the same
machine and use the 'Graphics - expanded' benchmark.
TEST CONDITIONS:
____________________________________________________ Mfr: Dell Inc.
Model: Latitude E5470
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise64-bit
____________________________________________________ CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz
Max Clock Speed: 2.496Ghz
Number of Processors: 2
Number of Logical Processors: 4
Total Physical Memory: 8GB @ 2133Mhz
____________________________________________________ Drive Type: local Disk (NTFS)
Drive Model: SanDisk X400 M.2 2280 128GB
____________________________________________________ Graphics Card: Intel(R) HD Graphics 520
Graphics RAM: 1GB
Driver version: 22.20.16.4836
____________________________________________________ Screen Resolution: 1366x768x32bit @ 59Hz
DPI Scaling: 100%

Autodesk Fabrication: Best Practice #2

Don’t use BMP files for ITM Images

If you’ve been using an Autodesk Fabrication configuration for a long time, like back before Autodesk acquired MAP Software Ltd, you may have a lot of content that’s using Bitmap (*.BMP) files. These image files are used on a couple key locations….

1: Service Palettes….

2: Folders Dialog….

If you’re Fabrication configuration uses BMP files for images, you should consider converting them to PNG files. There’s a number of utilities that will do this in bulk for you if you have a lot. My favorite is using TechSmith’s SnagIt Editor but there are others.

Use Windows Explorer and browse to your content. You can use the search functionality in the upper right corner and search on *.BMP to see how many Bitmap images there are. Or you can browse folder by folder looking for them. Hint: Sorting by type can speed with this too.

Once you convert the BMP’s place the PNG files in the same folder using the same name as the BMP and then delete the BMP files. Doing this will reduce the size of the files which in turn speeds the display of your service palettes and folder’s list.

AutoCAD Performance & RegApps

Slow Drawings?

One of the powerful features of AutoCAD is the ability for applications to built on top of it. Unfortunately,  these applications can often leave remnants of themselves inside your drawings and cause performance issues. One such side effect is the buildup of Registered Applications or RegApps for short. These RegApps are left in the drawing’s Symbol table after entities that contained the XDATA (Extended Entity Data) they used are deleted.

While this can affect any user, this can be very common in the AEC industry as collaboration with external parties and trade partners means you’re typically referencing a lot of files from many sources. I’ve seen cases where a drawing with 50,000 RegApps can take 10 minutes to load and after clearing RegApps, takes merely seconds.

What most people don’t realize is that even though “RegApp” is an option with the PURGE command, using PURGE ALL will NOT remove them. You need to call PURGE separately, with only the REGAPP option.  Click the following ScreenCast recording link to see a demonstration of this…

Example: How to Purge RegApps

  The video shows PURGE ALL and doesn’t list that any RegApps were removed. Purge is then called again, and only the REGAPP option is used which then removes several RegApps. Try it yourself, the drawing used was in the Sample Civil Sheet Set drawings that shipped with AutoCAD 2018.

Problem Keeps Returning?

External References (XREFS) and/or blocks can make the problem difficult to eliminate. You may need to process all Xrefs and block libraries to verify these RegApps aren’t being introduced from those sources. If you’ve used WBLOCK to save a block to disk from a RegApp corrupt drawing, that DWG file also has the issue.

Luckily, Autodesk has a batch utility (free) that will process multiple file/folders, automatically look in sub-folders as well as automatically load any referenced drawings as well.

Click the following ScreenCast link to see the process in action…

Example: CleanupRegApp Utility

Depending on your version of AutoCAD, you can get this utility from the following links..

201832-Bit Program64-Bit ProgramKnowledge Base ArticleRead Me
201732-Bit Program64-Bit ProgramKnowledge Base ArticleRead Me
2015-201632-Bit Program64-Bit ProgramKnowledge Base ArticleRead Me
2013-201432-Bit Program64-Bit ProgramKnowledge Base ArticleRead Me
2010-201232-Bit Program64-Bit ProgramKnowledge Base ArticleRead Me
2008-200932-Bit Program64-Bit ProgramKnowledge Base ArticleRead Me

Schedule Cleanup After Hours

One last benefit if this utility is that it can be called from a DOS window with command like syntax. In a collaborative environment where Xrefs are being updated frequently by others, RegApps can keep getting reintroduced requiring this process to be run frequently. Because you can call this process completely automated from the a DOS prompt, this means you can create a batch file that’s scheduled to be run on a regular basis, even nightly on your drawing library. The following Screen Cast link shows how to call the utility from a DOS command prompt…

Example: DOS Command line