Revit – Reducing the size of your Revit model

by Garry Stockton

There’s nothing worse in Revit than when you get the blue circle telling you its thinking about something, especially when you have a deadline to meet. Slow network, drivers and WIFI can all slow your Revit model. Revit performance issues can especially become a major problem when working on larger projects. Running the model can become sluggish, and loading and saving can take forever making design very frustrating.

Below is a list of housekeeping tricks to help run your Revit session, smoothly.

PURGE

Purge your Revit file of unused content. Get rid of all unused families, groups, materials etc. These can really add up to increase your file size, so if you don’t need them, delete them! You can always bring them back if you need to later.

CLOSE HIDDEN WINDOWS

When Revit regenerates the model, it does so in every currently opened view. Use the ‘Close Inactive’ command to close the open windows that you are not using or use the shortcut key CH.

CLOSE WORKSETS

When working in your Revit project, most of the time you will be focused on just one view or area at a time. To help speed up your Revit, it’s a good idea to close any active worksets that you are not currently working in.