Diet tips (not only) for the summer - keep your Revit project slim!

The performance of Revit is of course closely related to the hardware configuration of the computer. Autodesk updates the hardware requirements for the individual products with each new version. Hardware requirements for Revit 2015 - These are clearly broken down into minimum requirements, recommended requirements and finally the requirements for complex, large projects.

But what exactly is behind these requirements and what effect do they have in practice?

The most important requirement for Revit is RAM - the more RAM, the better! For this reason, you should always use Windows 64-bit (since the 2015 version, Revit is not offered in the 32-bit version anyway). The background is that 32-bit systems can only access a maximum of 4 GB of RAM - no matter how much is in the computer. But how much memory does Revit really need? There is a simple way to determine the approximate memory requirement for a project:

(size of the .rvt file in MB x 20) x (size of the linked files in MB x 20) = memory requirement in MB

With a Revit file with 120 MB, a linked Revit model with 50 MB and four linked CAD files with 1 MB each, this is approx. 3.5 GB of RAM, which is only used by Revit.
To keep the memory requirement as low as possible, you should therefore pay attention to the file size and keep your Revit project lean. The following tips will help:

• Linked CAD files are much easier to manage than imported files. If you are faced with the choice, always select Link and regularly check whether all linked files are still required. Delete the links that are no longer required - if you do need the reference again, you can link the file again at any time. It is also advisable to briefly clean up the CAD files before linking in AutoCAD - the tried and tested command Purge works wonders here!
  

• Imported CAD files have a very negative effect on the size of the .rvt file. Under no circumstances should you explode an imported CAD file in the Revit project in order to be able to edit it further! Revit is not a CAD program and cannot handle the abundance of unrelated lines well. In addition, once you have imported data in this way, it is very difficult to remove it from the Revit project. If you absolutely want to import CAD files into Revit, you should create a family with the template Detailed element start, import the CAD file in the family editor and edit it if necessary. If you then load the family into the Revit project, the information is available to you, but it is much easier to remove the family again if you no longer need it.
  

• Delete the families you do not need - you can either do this manually via the project browser or automatically using the "Clean up unused" command (tab Manage) - this deletes all families, materials and other definitions not used up to that point, which is why you should not necessarily do this at the start of a project - the result in this case would be an empty template. If you still need a cleaned-up family later on, you can of course easily load it either from the Revit library or from another project.

• Only create project families in special cases in which you really only place this family once in the project. If a project family is often used in the project, it should always be created and loaded as a separate family. The reason for this is that a separate copy is created each time a project family is placed, which can make the project very bloated. A classic Revit family, on the other hand, only exists once in the project, no matter how often it is placed.

• Last but not least A tip that does not directly affect the file size, but nevertheless has a major impact on performance: every view that you open in Revit remains open until you explicitly close it and therefore takes up memory. You should therefore regularly close all windows in the background. The "Close hidden windows" command can be found in the View tab or by default in the quick access toolbar.