In the Revit products there is an easy way to regain a level of performance and system stability if you are working on a large project, its by reducing the file size.

To do this without actually losing anything is easy, it’s called “compacting” the Revit File.

  1. Select the big “R” in the upper, left side of the screen.
  2. Go to SAVE (or SaveAs).
  3. Select the Options button.
  4. Select “Compact File”.
  5. Click OK to the open dialogue boxes to save the Revit file.

This process will take a little longer than a traditional save, but I’ve seen a project go from 155mb and become reduced down 84mb.  That kind of reduction could substantially reduce the amount of RAM required to keep a project open/not crashing (freeing a potential 1gb+ of RAM for other applications depending on the model/processes/operating system).