The Revit Clinic

Autodesk Certified Hardware Tool

Great post over on Without a Net I thought important to pass along since it covers Revit as well.  Check out the post at the link below:

New Autodesk Certified Hardware Tool

Exporting Ambient Occlusion

You can include Ambient Occlusion in an exported image.  However when exporting an image from a view with Ambient Occlusion enabled there is a threshold related to the pixel size of the export and whether or not the effect can be included.  Typically once you go above 2000-2100 pixels in the horizontal direction the effect will be excluded.

For example; you have a monitor resolution of 1600 X 1200.  You are exporting a shaded view with Ambient Occlusion enabled, at 300 DPI, to a TIFF image.  If you keep the R > Export > Images > Images and Animations > Image > Image Size, around 2000 pixels, Ambient Occlusion should be included.

 

Go above +/- 2050 pixels [which can vary based on your monitor resolution] the effect should be excluded from the image export.  I have included 2 comparison images below:

2000 Pixels

 

2050 Pixels

 

Updated Revit 2011 System Requirements

Just thought I would pass this along.  We just updated the Revit system requirements pages with some additional information.  Now, the pages include links to important information (like graphic card info) and also include some hardware recommendations for performance. 

Check out the updates for each of the Revit products:

Autodesk Revit Architecture

Autodesk Revit Structure

Autodesk Revit MEP

Hopefully, this will lend you a hand picking out hardware for running Revit. 

Visualization and Graphic Card Troubleshooting Centers

Recently, I published two troubleshooting centers on Autodesk.com. You may have seen them if you subscribe to the Revit KB RSS Feed.   

• Revit Graphic Card Troubleshooting Center
• Revit Visualization Troubleshooting Center

We’ve been doing some research within Product Support and I am finding a lot of users struggling with these two topics.  Visualization and Graphic cards in Revit products can be a little tricky .  We created these troubleshooting centers as a way to help navigate the subjects and easily provide the most relevant solutions and blog posts so that you can find the answers you need.   

The plan is to keep these pages up to date with the latest information when it is available.  Our goal is to provide you with the best knowledge base for Revit products.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these two pages.  Any feedback you have on our Knowledge base for Revit products as a whole would be great as well.   

Thanks,

Graphic Cards and the Lenovo w500 with ATI Mobility FireGL V5700 Graphics Card

I wanted to pass along some additional graphics card related information.  First, I highly recommend reading through the Graphics Card FAQ page.  It has a lot of great information regarding graphics cards and should be required reading.  Now for the Lenovo w500...

If you are using Revit 2011 and have a Lenovo® w500 with an ATI® Mobility FireGL V5700 graphics card, I have included some information for you below:

Hardware Acceleration was disabled for Lenovo W500 computers based on reported general instability issues.

The underlying cause is not specific to Revit, but it could occur more frequently during the use of Revit if hardware acceleration was enabled.  These issues included crashes, blue screens, and general stability issues.

There are 3 parts to the fix for this issue:

1.  Lenovo has made a fix available for this issue which requires a BIOS update.

2.  After the BIOS update the graphics card driver can be updated to the recommended version.

3.  However since this graphics card configuration was not supported for Revit 2011 because of this issue, the OCAReport.XML file will need to be deleted.

If you fall under this hardware \ graphics card combination, and would like to work through this issue, I have included the steps below:

1.  First, if you have been experiencing stability issues disable PowerPlay in the Catalyist Control Center > Graphics Settings > PowerPlay. Un-check Enable PowerPlay.

2.  If after disabling PowerPlay you see improvement in stability, the BIOS fix should permanently resolve this issue for you.

3.  Below is the description for updating the BIOS:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-73619

4.  Here is the link for updating the BIOS:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-70353

5.  After the BIOS is updated, the graphics card driver can be updated to the recommended driver.  The link for this driver is below:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/TPAD-ISV.html#Inventor

Choose Inventor > ThinkPad W500.  Note that the BIOS link is also available on this page as well.

6.  Restart the workstation after installing the graphics driver.

7.  Delete the following file on the workstation; “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit Architecture 2011\Program\ OCAReport.XML”.  The next time you launch Revit you can now enable hardware acceleration.

8.  Also, with the BIOS and driver updated on the workstation you can typically re-enable ATI PowerPlay.

I hope this helps any users with this configuration!

Revit 2011 Update 1 Graphics Hardware List

Based on additional testing that has been performed, the Graphics Hardware List of cards and drivers that are supported for use with Revit has been updated.

The updated list replaces the previous list at the link below:

Graphics Hardware List

I have organized the changes made to the list between the original release and the update 1 release below:

1.  AMD Driver 6.14.11.700 updated to 6.14.11.678

2.  AMD Driver 8.14.11.700 updated to 8.14.11.678

3.  The following cards \ drivers additionally have been tested and added to the list:

-NVIDIA Quadro – Windows XP 32-Bit and 64-Bit – Driver 6.14.11.9703

-NVIDIA Quadro – Windows Vista / 7 32-Bit and 64-Bit – Driver 8.17.11.9703

4.  The following cards \ drivers have been updated to a “Not Supported” status based additional testing:

-NVIDIA Quadro – Windows XP 32-Bit and 64-Bit – Driver 6.14.11.9187

-NVIDIA Quadro – Windows XP 32-Bit and 64-Bit – Driver 6.14.11.9178

-NVIDIA Quadro – Windows Vista / 7 32-Bit and 64-Bit – Driver 8.16.11.9178

-NVIDIA Quadro – Windows Vista / 7 32-Bit and 64-Bit – Driver 8.16.11.9187

-NVIDIA GeForce – Windows XP 32-Bit and 64-Bit – Driver 6.14.11.9621

-NVIDIA GeForce – Windows Vista / 7 32-Bit and 64-Bit – Driver 8.17.11.9621

For the majority of the cards above, there is an alternate or more recent driver available that is tested \ supported instead:

-For 6.14.11.9187 & 6.14.11.9178, version 6.14.11.9703 is supported \ recommended.

-For 8.16.11.9178 & 8.16.11.9187, version 8.17.11.9703 is supported \ recommended.

-For 6.14.11.9621, version 6.14.11.7824 is supported \ recommended.

I hope this helps organize and clarify and changes made between the initial and update release!

A note about Revit 2011 realistic views, Parallels 5 and Mac OS X 10.6.3

We stumbled upon a rather ugly looking issue affecting Revit 2011 realistic views after applying the latest Mac OS X update.

After applying the update to the Mac, Revit 2011's new realistic view materials look all funny (a very technical term) when you are running a Windows OS with Parallels 5.  Here is what you get (with the basic sample project in 2011):

We've confirmed that this issue happens when you have updated your mac to version 10.6.3 with the latest version of Parallels 5 (5.0.9344.558741) and you have hardware acceleration enabled (on the OS and Revit).

We've talked to the team over at Parallels and they have informed us that this issue is planned to be addressed in the next update of Parallels Desktop 5.  

If you have already updated your OS and are seeing this, I don't have a good solution till Parallels releases their update.  I have not found a way to roll back a Mac OS X update, though I am not a Mac expert by any means.

Revit 2011 Graphics Q&A

I've compiled a list of some of the common questions \ answers on graphics related issues.  I hope this helps organize this information in one place:

When launching Revit 2011 I receive a Some features may not be fully supported by the video card and driver on this computer message

See the following technical solution, Some features may not be fully supported by the video card and driver on this computer.

When using remote desktop to connect to my workstation why is hardware acceleration disabled?

Hardware Acceleration will be disabled for remote desktop clients.  Software mode will instead be utilized.  You should receive the following dialog at startup if launching Revit over a remote connection:

 

On the Revit Graphics Hardware List are there driver download links?

There are no links to download the drivers directly on the list at this time.  It is recommended to instead visit your graphic card manufacturers web site to download the same driver version outlined in the document.

I've updated my driver and I still get a message at 2011 startup; why is the dialog still coming up?

Take note of the specific message on the dialog after Problem:.  If your card is supported/recommended but you are running a driver more recent that the version tested, a dialog will still appear at startup [which you can dismiss if needed].

Ambient Occlusion does not appear to be active, is there a setting I need to modify?

Ensure that your graphics card is supported and that hardware acceleration is enabled.

Why in my realistic view are materials not visible?

Ensure that your graphics card is supported and that hardware acceleration is enabled.  See the following technical solution, Materials are not visible in a Revit view set to realistic visual style, for additional information.

What if my card or driver does not appear in the list or I have issues with a specific card?

You can use the Report a Problem link to submit specific graphics card issues with Revit 2011 products you may encounter.

Have you crashed lately?

We have been hearing a lot of reports that Revit 2010 is not very stable.  Many users have been experiencing crashes in the product.  Through some investigation of Customer Error Reports (CER), see a great post about CER here, we are seeing that many users are crashing due to out of date video graphic card drivers.  

In Revit 2010, there were changes made behind the scenes regarding the display of graphics in the application,  a good post of the subject can be found in a post on Inside the Factory called Tuning the Graphics Engine, these changes might cause your old graphics card driver not to work as well before and may be the cause of the instablilty you are seeing.  

Please, make sure that you are using the latest version of the driver for your graphics card.   

This will greatly help the stability of Revit, preventing crashes from occuring.  Also, if you are crashing, make sure you submit those CER reports with your email address and then go ahead and contact Autodesk Support or your Reseller for help. 

Hardware what?

Hardware Acceleration is a setting that controls whether or not software uses hardware or software to help display graphics on your monitor. Hardware acceleration can speed up the display of graphics while working in a application.  For CAD applications this is a very important setting because everything we do typically has to do with graphics in some way. 

Just about every Autodesk application has a hardware acceleration setting somewhere …

 

 

Each one of these applications benefit from hardware acceleration from a performance and speed perspective, however, all of these applications can also have stability issues when you use Hardware acceleration.

Revit uses OpenGL 1.3 for its graphics generation.  This is an open standard that any graphics card can use, so theoretically, if your graphics card is compatible with OpenGL 1.3 you can turn on Hardware acceleration and have a benefit. 

However, because OpenGL is an open standard, not every graphics card uses the standard exactly the same way.  This means that different graphics drivers might have different functionality even if they all are using the same standard.   This can make interaction between the software and the graphics card difficult.  Think about it this way, the software and the graphics card may speak the same language, but have completely different accents. 

I spent a week in London a number of years ago for a Architectural course I was taking and while I was there I went into a book store to buy the 5th Harry Potter book (I was in London, the book had just come out, and I am a big geek who loves the Harry Potter books).  When I went to the counter to pay, I could not understand a word out of the tellers mouth.  She was speaking English, but not saying anything that I could understand.  Her accent was just so think that I couldn’t make out the words she was saying.  I love London, but it made me realize that not everyone who speaks English can understand each other. 

OpenGL is a lot like this.  If the graphics card and software don’t use the same accent the software can crash or freeze or have another problem. 

So the question is which cards work right?  This is not really even possible to answer for sure.  There are some good forum posts out there that talk about this, but it is based on experience and what has worked for others.  This is because graphics cards don’t typically advertise how they implemented the standard so it is up in the air whether it will work or not.  

Really, the easiest answer is to this question is to turn off Hardware acceleration in the software.  For Revit, you are not going to be losing much.  Revit doesn’t use your graphics hardware like other CAD applications; more of its performance is based on the physical memory on your machine and less on your graphics hardware.  Turning it off is not a huge loss and you might make your life a little bit easier.