Beyond Design

Navisworks Help now also available online

There's a lot of information out there on the internet and sometimes it can be difficult to know where to find the answers you're looking for. With this in mind we recently published our product help online, meaning that you can quickly find all the answers that you're looking for.

You can access the product help using the following links:

Navisworks Manage

Navisworks Simulate

Navisworks Freedom

This online help contains comprehensive information on how to use all aspects of Navisworks, and gives you an understanding of both the features that you use regularly, and those that you may be less aware of.

You can use the Table of Contents to navigate your way through the topics, and find information about the features that you're interested in. Alternatively you can use the help books as tutorials, and work your way through them all to learn about the full functionality of Navisworks – why not teach yourself to be a super-user!

You can also use the Index and the Search tabs to find specific information that you're looking for.

The content is structured in a logical manner that fits in with your workflows. Overviews of concepts are detailed under the Concept tab. Click the Procedure tab and you'll be taken to a list of related procedures. The Quick Reference tab gives you information on items in a specific window, such as buttons, icons or context (right-click) menus.

Using the buttons in the top right of the online help as displayed in this image, you can show the topic you are currently viewing in the contents, save the topic to your favorites which can be invaluable if you use topics regularly, go back to the home tab, or email a link to a colleague.

Let us know what you think about the new online help by adding a comment below.

Auditing a Navisworks model for very distant items

I'd like you all to try something, open a large Navisworks project you are working on, if you press 'Page Up' to zoom out to the entire model, and you can no longer see the model or it looks tiny then you should audit it for very distant items.

This is something we recommend you do as a simple check whenever creating an NWD, large or small, but there are symptoms of models which desperately need this, I've listed a few below: -

• When you render your model through Presenter, only the background shows, or you seem to get holes or triangles missing from a render
• When you navigate the model it looks like you have a section plane in front of you, as described here
• Jerky performance when navigating
• Model disappears when rotating around the model
• When you zoom out the model disappears
• Two faces seem to occupy the same space giving a jagged looking surface

When focused in on the model select an item (not the whole model) and save this as a Selection Set. You will use this in a minute to identify the location of the model in the view, or return to the model at any time.

Press Page Up to Zoom out to the extents of the model. If the model is not zoomed out then the distant objects may be behind the model, rotate the model 90° and press Page Up again to Zoom back out.

Go to the Item Tools toolbar

Select the Move tool, a gizmo should now appear where the model is in the viewpoint.

Use the Selection Box tool to select the areas away from the gizmo and the model, in the image below I made four selection boxes, in the third selection box I found a single item, with the move tool still selected the gizmo shows where this item is. When items are selected, either follow the steps below for each item, or add them to a new selection set(s) for further investigation.

Use Page Down to Zoom in to the selected items.

There is a quicker route to do this by using the selection box to select the main model then inverting the selection, however this may miss multiple instances of the same item and will not give you as much control when looking for the distant items.

Once you have identified any very distant items there are several possible routes to improve the model quality.

1. The easiest method is simply to Hide those items, once they are hidden then the bounding box of the model will be vastly reduced, improving the symptoms listed above, the items however will still be in the model.
2. If this is a whole CAD file in a distant location you may need to apply a transform to place it correctly in the model or change the origin or coordinates in the CAD file so it comes into the correct location.
3. Go back to the native CAD model, use the properties to identify the object
   1. If it is distant from the model or at the origin coordinates in the CAD package then it should be placed correctly or deleted dependent on your model and practices. Save the model and refresh the Navisworks scene.
   2. If it is correctly placed in the model then you need to look more closely into why this part of the model has been translated incorrectly, check the options for reading the file in or look at alternate routes to bring the model into Navisworks. If you cannot find an obvious problem, log a support case with the model data and details of the very distant item (either on the Navisworks Forums or through the Subscription Center), we may also be able to use this to improve Navisworks file handling.
4. Check if the object has any transformation overrides placing it in the wrong place with Right Click > Reset Item > Reset Transforms.

Please let us know if this helps you out by leaving a comment below.

Free Excerpt from new "Mastering Autodesk Navisworks 2012" book

We know you love freebies; we saw how many of you downloaded the free ground planes we offered a few weeks ago. Well here's another one, a few pages from the newly released 'Mastering Autodesk Navisworks 2012' book by Jason Dodds and Scott Johnson. Both these guys have years of experience working with Navisworks in the field with you guys, implementing workflows, pushing the limits of the product and doing things we didn't even realize Navisworks could do!

We've saved an important part of the book for you. Lots of people ask how they should work with NWC, NWD and NWF files for their workflow, these pages explain a little more about what each file format is, how it is used and a more detailed typical workflow, something many people would pay thousands of dollars for a consultant to do for them! Download these pages here

Now if you think that's a valuable bit of information then you should get yourself a copy of the book from here: -

Mastering Autodesk Navisworks 2012

I've got a copy sat here next to me and just picked up a couple of handy things about Timeliner I never knew, I'd tell you what they are but you'll have to get the book to find them out yourself!

Free Download - Navisworks Ground Planes

Don't like your model floating in space? Do you find your avatar falling off the side of the model when you have gravity on? You probably need a ground plane. You may want to bring in an accurate terrain map from Civil 3D but for many of you, you're only dealing with the building itself, in which case a simple flat ground plane will do the job.

The link below will let you download a zip file with 9 ground planes, there's 3 sizes, 10m x 10m, 100m x 100m and 1000m x 1000m, and 3 materials, Grass, Concrete and Asphalt.

Simply Append one to your model and move it underneath the building model, and like magic you'll have a surrounding area to walk around, a better area for visualisations and you'll be able to get a better idea of scale.

For the more advanced users, you can modify the material in Presenter and replace it with a aerial image (e.g. from Google Maps) or a more suitable texture.

Download Ground_Planes.zip (10.8MB)