Revit to BIM 360 Glue improvements

It's fair to say I get overly excited about small improvements in our products, and this is one I've been waiting for a few months for.

When pushing a model from Revit to Glue historically we have created a lightweight DWF file to push up to BIM 360 Glue, this minimises the bandwidth used rather than uploading the entire Revit model, and allows you to run the faster iterative design review more quickly. In the latest release of the Revit exporter in BIM 360 Glue we now give you the option to push to DWF or the Navisworks NWC file format.

You may be wondering why you may want to use NWC to push to Glue instead of DWF as you always have. The main areas of improvement are: -

• Viewing of materials has improved, any materials that come from the standard materials library will be available to view on any machine which already has the library installed, e.g. current versions of Revit, AutoCAD or Navisworks. Note: This isn't currently available through the iPad.

• Improved colour support, this is important for your MEP especially to help easily define between HVAC and sprinklers for example.
  
  
• Improved object names and model tree hierarchy, This will allow you to identify similar elements or look at items by Level or floor as you have had in Navisworks for years. Also the naming convention in DWF typically picks up the Element ID of the object, NWC just has this information as a property, reducing the chance of confusion and making it easier to create Sets for BIM 360 Field and when you open the live file in Navisworks.

• Improved Property support, the NWC file will bring through properties in the same way as Navisworks allowing you to access a wider range of properties. You'll also see that you can access different groups of properties within the model using the dropdown. So you can quickly find information about Phasing, or materials of that item.

 

• This also improves the way you can map properties for BIM 360 Field. With improved naming of items and the fuller range of properties available you can right click and Create an Equipment Set from any item or Property, which can then be used in BIM 360 Field to collect information against that item.

Of course you can still use DWF for existing projects or for specific requirements but we think you'll like the improvements available by using NWC with BIM 360 Glue.

Let us know what you think in the comments below.