Mastering Autodesk Revit 2017 for Architecture

Appendix B Tips, Tricks, and Troubleshooting

This appendix provides some tips, tricks, and troubleshooting to help keep your project files running smoothly. Listed here are some pointers to keep you from getting into trouble as well as a peppering of time-savers and other great ideas.

In this appendix, you’ll learn to:

• Optimize performance
• Use best practices
• Maintain quality control
• Apply tips and shortcuts

Optimizing Performance

It should make sense that a smaller Revit file on a fast computer with a good network will run the quickest. There is no real “typical” project file size for Autodesk^® Revit^® Architecture projects, and a file can range anywhere from 10 MB to well over 800 MB. We’ve found that a project with less square footage and with a lot of geometry and detail (like a medical office building) can be larger in file size than a warehouse project—which has a lot of empty square footage. Because documentation is often an indication of project complexity, we’ve found as a good rule of thumb that for each documented sheet, your file should be about 1 MB. So a completed project of 100 full-size sheets should be about 100 MB.

Much of the variation depends on the level of detail in the model itself, the presence of imported geometry (2D CAD files, SketchUp, and so on), the number of views you have, and the overall complexity. Obviously, your hardware configuration will also be a factor in determining the speed and operation of your models.

You can optimize your hardware ...