Network Compatibility of Revit

[grachel21]

We have been testing Autodesk Revit 9.1 between our two offices (point to point T1 no firewall in between). The majority of the work with Revit is being done in our main office. We also have users at our remote office who are working simultaneously on the same application. At our remote office, we are facing issues like delayed response time, and saving Revit files is very time consuming. Hence, reducing our productivity to a great extent.

Any help :(?

Thanks.

[johnwilliams6969]

I can understand the problems that u might be facing, since we also came across some similar issues.

For the time being , I mean till we find some solution, this is how we are managing.
Only one regular user in a branch office uses Revit all the time. He coordinates closely with the other revit users when he needs to work on a project. He virtually signs out the whole Revit project file area by renaming it, he then copies the whole Revit project down to his office, does his work, copies the work products back to the central office, then renames the project back so everyone knows the data are accessible to them again.

The only reason the work around works for them is they don't all have to be working on the same project at the same time.

[garyparker84]

Well, the T1 line will be a *lot* slower than your LAN (1.544 Mbps vs 100 or 1000 Mbps), and you would expect that to have an impact on Revit performance.

If you really need to run files 'live' over the T1, you might want to look at some WAN-optimization kit.

[SLW210]

If you really need to speed things up you might want to go to T3 (43.232 megabits per second) or more. Not sure of the cost difference, but time is money.

[grachel21]

The DS3 is the data carried on a T3 circuit. As far as cost to access is concerned, the price calculation has two distance steps: geomapping and the determination of local price arrangements. We need to figure out the time we will be using these carrier lines in order to manage costs.

[garyparker84]

Revit over the network is slow in terms of opening the model.

After that its speed is the same at all desktops...
If one or two users are in the model - speed is ok...

But if the users are more than that - speed becomes a crawl...
whether the model resides in the same office or over the network...

[johnwilliams6969]

Please be aware that increasing the 'pipe' size will not necessarily give the performance boost you are looking for. It will heavily depend on the physical distance between the two sites. Distance is the main contributer to latency (or network delay).

The greater the delay, the more likely that a WAN link will be limited in real throughput not by the pipe size - at which point bigger pipes will make NO difference to a single users experience. This is not to say that bigger pipes are not useful, particularly when you need more users using that link at the same time.

And this leads to WAN optimizers, there primary purpose being to significantly reduce the effect of latency and also reduce the data traveling over the link.

[garyparker84]

Revit may depend more on the reliability and capacity of your WAN links. Civil 3D shares data on the file level, Revit on the workset (object) level.

But with adequately "thick" WAN lines you can use both AutoCAD Civil 3D and Revit in the same way as on LAN (which is used very often).

[grachel21]

Many firms have used the Riverbed network acceleration hardware when they have offices in multiple locations. Do anybody out here has had first hand experience with these products?

[johnwilliams6969]

There are various WAFS and caching appliance and software-based solutions which work very well for other applications as well, for example Steelhead from Riverbed, the Tacit Networks appliance, and Availl software. While work sharing, Revit is constantly checking to make sure items are not being edited by others, and locking items when you edit them. If the network is slow, Revit will be slow.

[rossengary]

We did first test over our standard T3 WAN using a 110mb project file. Working directly in the Central file over the WAN was impossible. Saving to central, required upwards of 30 minutes.
The second test was performed after Riverbed appliances were connected between three of our offices. The same file was usable and saving to central was reduced to several minutes.

Revit does work over a wan, but it is indeed very slow. The Riverbed appliance is the best bet right now.

[garyparker84]

Some Revit users are using Riverbed WAN software/hardware solutions:

http://www.riverbed.com/solutions/accelerate/cad_apps.php

It's not cheap, but if you workflow requires working on the same file from multiple offices; it may be worth it to you. Short of speeding up the WAN, I think I would have each office working on a separate file that is linked into the files of the other offices.

[johnwilliams6969]

Some people do the VPN / Remote Desktop approach instead of the Riverbeds.

They setup cheap headless desktop units in the main office that remote users can log into and work from, so that Revit is on the LAN all the time. With a decent VPN / Remote Desktop setup its workable.

The Riverbed stuff is awesome, if not cheap.

[rossengary]

The Riverbed devices offer pretty much the best performance, especially for MS Windows environments.
They will improve the performance for Revit users. You do need to start with a decent network (as in LAN). And also worth noting, they can never offer the same performance as those on the same LAN experience, but they can move it much closer. For smaller files and office type docs, this is often insignificant - but for larger CAD files, you will still notice it.

My suggestion is to get some in for a trial.

[garyparker84]

We have a small company with two locations. Working with Revit worksharing used to be so slow that it was not possible for us before we upgraded to a set of Riverbed boxes (WAN acceleration devices).

We have a relatively slow line 2mbit in and 512 MB out, and thought about getting a city to city dedicated line, which would probably solve our problems. But the price per month was outrageous.

One of the Revit gurus in Autodesk recommended Riverbed. It worked, and the guys at Riverbed have been absolutely fantastic and helpful in setting it all up for us over the phone/email. The boxes were expensive but the performance was outrageous.

We had a huge Revit file of about 100 MB, which took 30 minutes before the boxes were set up. After the boxes were installed it uploaded in something like 20 seconds. The first time you transfer something over it takes a long time, then the second time it transfers really fast.

Hope it helps.

[rossengary]

We have Riverbeds in all our offices. We did our benchmarking well over a year, and it was definitely worth the expense. We just recently added the Steelheads (Riverbed) Mobile Software to our laptop users. I went from Save To Central times in excess of an hour down to 10 minutes connecting from a hotel with VPN. I have had the Steelhead Mobile for maybe 3 months and I now wouldn't work without it.

[rossengary]

The option of Riverbed is awesome, if not cheap.

[grachel21]

The reviews for Riverbed are positive from all sides. We had a test trial and found that it addressed all the issues that we were facing, in terms of application acceleration, bandwidth savings and usability; especially sharing large graphic and design files (Revit Files).

Looking forward to get these products in, in the coming time.