I was using my Dell laptop away from my desk the other day and noticed that Revit was running sluggishly. It seemed to open just fine, but was very slow when placing walls, ducts, components, as well as trying to select items. I tried various things to speed up Revit, but didn’t find anything to help. All other programs and functionality of the computer seemed to operate just fine. The next day, I was back working at my desk and Revit ran its normal speed. I was pleased. A couple of days later, I noticed Revit running sluggish again. Thus began my journey of determining what was causing the Revit performance issue.
Long story short, it was the AC/DC adapter that I was using for my Dell laptop. At my desk, I was using the adapter that came with my current laptop. When I was having Revit performance issues, I was utilizing the adapter that came with my previous Dell laptop. My new laptop uses a 180 watt adapter, while my old laptop uses a 130 watt adapter. While I realized that the adapter was not what was required, I had not realized that an underpowered adapter would impact Revit graphical performance to the extreme degree that it did.
While this is a bit of an embarrassing moment, I am hoping that someone may benefit from this tidbit of information about AC/DC adapters and Revit.
The following message did appear when plugging in the 130 watt adapter:
Applying Technology to Architecture 