Detailed Steel Modeling Background Process

Learn how the background process works when calculating some of the most commonly used actions for detailed steel design.

In the bottom right corner of the platform, there is a Spinner icon that indicates when the background process is calculating. If you click on the spinner icon, the Background Processes dialog appears. This dialog gives you information about what is being calculated at that moment.

Note: The dialog cannot be moved or re-sized.


Note: The calculations displayed in the background process are done in another Revit session, called a RevitWorker. If you start the Windows Task Manager you will see the new process.

The Worker automatically shuts down when Revit is closed.

Actions such as move, copy, align, rotate, delete, element modification and connection creation are performed on background calculation processes –a separate RevitWorker.exe process accompanies the main Revit.exe process, and handles these actions . This allows you to perform other actions while the previous command (sent to the Revit Worker) is still in progress. This is most useful on large models, where such actions could take a lot of time, blocking you from doing anything else during that time.

How It Works

When performing move, copy, align, rotate, delete actions, modifying elements or creating connections, the mouse is blocked just for a few seconds. Then, the task is calculated as a background process and you can perform other actions such as move, delete, modify elements, place dimensions and tags, create views, or navigate the model.

You can see the task in progress in the Background Processes window, located in the status bar. A graphic representation of the model is provided when the mouse is free. This temporary representation reflects the changes applied on the steel elements, but it is not a perfect depiction of the model, since the calculations for the geometry modifications are not done at that moment. Elements involved in the background processes are highlighted in a different color while the calculations for them are in progress.

To change the highlight color for the elements involved in background calculations:
  1. Click File tab Options button.
  2. In the Options dialog, click Graphics.
  3. Under Colors, choose a color in the Calculations field.

While a task is in progress, you can perform other actions. Navigation commands and annotation commands are done immediately, while other actions running on background processes (move, align, delete, element modification) will get another task which will be queued in the Background Processes list. The tasks will be completed in the order they were created.

Once a task is completed, it disappears from the list, the elements that were involved in the task will no longer be highlighted and the mouse will be blocked again for a few seconds while the calculated graphics are regenerated.

The task names that appear in the background processes list give information about the action that is being calculated and the number of elements that are affected by that action.

For:

Restart a Background Process Task

In the unlikely event of the RevitWorker process accidentally stopping, the actions that are still in the queue will be automatically paused and the Background Processes dialog will display information about this occurrence. E.g: "Multiple steel element changes failed. The requested multiple steel element changes have failed. Click Restart or Report Bug if available."

To restart the RevitWorker and resume the remaining queued actions, click the Restart button in the Background Processes dialog.

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Parent topic: Detailed Steel Modeling