By Dennis Collin
A Revit project file, if not managed properly, can easily suffer from performance issues, such as slow opening, error messages and crashes. Whilst the audit and purge command can help to a degree, it doesn’t address over modelled and excessively detailed component families. This can take a while to diagnose as families need to be saved out to a folder and then checked with Windows Explorer as to their file size. As a rule, families should be sized in terms of kilobytes rather than megabytes.
Fortunately, there is an easier option to quickly check family sizes, use the Family size reporter add in. Once installed, a function will appear in the Revit Add-ins tab which will automate the reporting process.
Once run this utility will examine all loaded families and potentially nested families and any imported CAD data. The utility will not however, report in-place families. Typical information will report size, category, number of elements etc. helping the BIM coordinator decide where action needs to be taken in optimising projects.
The deep scan process can take a while to complete and will write files out to a temporary folder, so it’s a good idea to have plenty of temporary storage space. Perhaps have a coffee whilst the app is running? Once completed a table can be viewed and information sorted and examined
A simple CSV export can take the family data into Excel for further diagnosis.
In summary therefore, this is an essential tool for any organisation using Revit, especially if you are in receipt of large consultant models which may be overdetailed or contain bloated manufacturers content. A great time saver for the Revit model audit process whatever the discipline.