How many times a day does AECOsim crash for you?

Question

Hey all, I need some serious help. 
 I am new to the Bentley infrastructure and having some major problems. 
 I have models supplied by our process engineers and our structural engineers. I have been shown how to create a project and reference these models. 
 I navigate with most of the references turned off. 
 Navigating the model takes an inordinate amount of time. 
 I get 20-40 crash/error report popups per day? 
 
 Where to I start to gain my sanity back?

Tom MacKnight · Accepted Answer

You know, we were having all sorts of speed issues and crashes. We couldn&rsquo;t figure out what it was. Network speed? Memory? We were going crazy. The fellow who started the project went about referencing files like the old days. He referenced files to other files when he needed them. He set the nesting level so he got what he wanted. It was a real mess. I suspected that circular references were a part of the problem. Think about it. If there were 20 references files that through nesting were attached on the average of 3 times, then statistics tell us the combinations would be 1140 nested references! So we started there. 
 So I had another individual go through and create a single master file, not only for architectural, but also for each discipline. There are often multiple models per discipline for as many as eight to ten disciplines. The references in each of the master files was set to no nesting. All of the references to each of our reference files were deleted and the master files were attached. My hunch proved much more on line than I though. Files opened more quickly by a factor of ten and the crashes stopped. We didn&rsquo;t have to do any other &ldquo;fixes.&rdquo; 
 Not only did this master file philosophy make thing much, much faster, it also made things better organized. Now if HVAC creates an additional model, then we only need to attach it to the single HVAC master to have it referenced to all of the other files. 
 Actually we could have attached the discipline files to the architectural master and set the nesting level to one and accomplished the same thing. This makes things even more organized. When you create a new file, all you need to do is attach the architectural master and you have all of the project models at your service. This could also be done in a &ldquo;modeling&rdquo; seed file, but we haven&rsquo;t done that yet. 
 For those who don&rsquo;t know, you can use the Level Display dialog, drill down through the nesting to the reference you want to turn on/off and left click and check/uncheck Display in the pop-up.

Tim West · Answer

Thanks Tom, 
 It does appear to be circular references. I was provided with an overall file with several packages referenced in, the package files and all the package references. When I set up my original file under the tutelage of the provider of the files, this wasn't communicated clearly. this meant that some of the circular referencing was my fault. After spending the hours required to find and rectify these issues, I have regained some stability, now I am crashing 2-5 times per hour. 
 I am experiencing the hanging you suggest Tom, even selecting some tools makes the software hang, sometimes fatally. 
 I haven't encountered "Maximum dependency...." message, though I think memory may be an issue as I get hanging from around 3.2GB RAM usage...

Steve Cocchi · Answer

OK, thanks Tim. If you're often sitting in that 3.2GB range then yes, a spike at that point certainly could be a factor. 
 Just from a pure testing perspective... have you signed up for the MicroStation x64 Early Access Preview? I'm just wondering how those same operations would fare in the native 64bit version. Granted, the building data will not be loaded so it's not quite a fair comparison, but if you're curious you could also try ABD's MicroStation mode first as a bridge of sorts between the two.

Marc Thomas · Answer

The impact on file size of having the additional levels is insignificant. 
 Having lots of levels in the interface can be bewildering but this can be managed with level filters. Once applied a level filter controls the level pop-down in (almost) all dialogs that have a levels pop-down. 
 Running a periodic batch process to compress files is a good idea.