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Model Maintenance Mondays

Jason KunkelMay 16th, 2016

 This is the start of a new segment on our blog brought to you be the CADD Reviteers and Helpesk Team. We see a lot (and I mean A LOT) of Revit models. Big, small, short, tall but the one thing that unites them all is the need to keep them running smoothly.
Keeping your model lean and mean helps the whole team!

Some common tips we recommend!

Daily

  • Start every morning with a new local file. You should be synchronizing your changes during the day so opening yesterday’s file isn’t considered a best practice.
  • Some consider this a 4-letter word. But honestly, please save your work. The biggest problem we see is people doing hours sometimes a full day’s work without saving or syncing back to the central file. When they do go to save, the file crashes or just refuses to save because your local is so out of date.

 Weekly

  • Check warnings! They do matter. A great rule of thumb is 3 MB per 1MB of project. So if you have a 200MB file you can safely have up to 600 warnings. Any more than that your model could become unstable.
    • But there are so many warnings! Which do I actually have to deal with? Anything with duplicate elements should always be addressed! You have multiple elements on top of each other. This can affect your scheduling depending on the object and affect model performance.
  • Check your file size. Typically, some increase is good, but if your model suddenly jumps up 150+MB in a week and you are the only one working on it, time to ask some questions!
  • Monday morning or Friday afternoon find a time when everyone is out of the model and compact it. Then have everyone create a new local file. You’ll be amazed how this simple step can help performance!

Monthly

  • Audit the central file.
  • Create a new central file.
  • Review and resolve warnings.
  • Delete unused or redundant views.
  • Purge unused elements that will not potentially be used in later phases of the project.
  • Compact the central and local files.
Following the simple steps above should keep your model healthy and happy all the way through CA!

Be sure to check back often for more Model Maintenance Mondays.

Interested in learning more? We'd love to chat!

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