Add 2D PDF sheets with Autodesk Navisworks 2015 PDF reader

Lee talked in a recent post how 2D support is the #1 shocking thing you never knew about Autodesk Navisworks. As the post explains 2D is still widely used, and one of the formats that many of you receive day in day out is PDF. Thanks to another little know thing called the Navisworks App Store you can now download a free plugin for Autodesk Navisworks Manage and Simulate 2015 (for Subscription customers) that lets you add 2D PDF sheets to your Navisworks project.
Why is that important you ask? If like most you receive project documentation as 2D PDF you will want to use it for quantity takeoff and general project review. Autodesk Navisworks PDF reader helps you add these 2D sheets directly to your Navisworks project. This means you can take off quantities and review your project not only in 3D but now also using 2D sheets. And Navisworks brings it together in a single project environment.

Prepare your quantity takeoff using any of the 50+ file formats and now PDF as data source.

PDF sheets are integrated in the project browser so you can browse page thumbnails, quickly jump to pages and prepare the sheets you require or prepare all at once.

Switch between the 3D model and 2D sheets with ease.

Stay tuned for a video to see it all in action – and meanwhile download and install Autodesk Navisworks 2015 PDF Reader from Autodesk Exchange to start using 2D PDF sheets in Autodesk Navisworks today!

Comments

[Lee Mullin]

Hi Robert, This is inbuilt for 2016, no need for a separate app

[Robert]

Is there a version of this App that is compatible with Navisworks 2016?

[Kavon]

Thomas, the information would be for the end user, to be able to pull up product data for any object in the model. Right now with links you need to reference an external source whether it be a website, a file on your harddrive, or cd. I'm wondering if you can get around the link to the external source and just embed the PDF's inside the model and map the links to the embedded PDF's, so when you send a model with links you just send 1 NWD file and not 1 NWD File that comes with a CD that has a bunch of PDF's on it.

I'm also worried that if you are able to embed all the PDF's in the 1 file that your file will be come a massive 1 GB NWD file that would be unreasonable to open and navigate efficiently.

[Thomas Schwaiger]

Hi Kavon,

could you explain a little more about who would use this information and why they need it? I may have a better answer for you depending on that.

But for now this is what you can do: The contents of the PDF sheets are embedded in the published NWD just like any other 2D sheet would be.
Now the Link feature let's you add hyperlinks to other files and URLs. You could link to the NWC that is produced when importing the PDF. Take note that each page from the PDF is converted to an individual NWC file.

Hope that helps and let me know how it goes.

Thomas

[Kavon]

Thomas, is it possible to link the 2D PDFs you bring into the NWF to objects in the model and have the PDF's stay with the file when you publish to NWD?

I.E Product Data and Cut Sheets?

[Thomas Schwaiger]

Thanks for your comment Daniel. The plugin currently doesn't process the vector elements of the PDF, which means there are no lines to snap to.

[Daniel Gijsbers]

It's a good feature but I do wonder why can't you snap to the lines in the pdf file like autocad can?