Beyond Design is your one-stop blog for the construction industry, BIM & technology. Stay ahead on the latest industry trends, receive tips & tricks and receive updates on what is happening with Autodesk construction workflows. From preconstruction to field management, Beyond Design has you covered.
Just wanted to provide an update for SmartPlant 3D (.vue) file format support in Navisworks.
On Friday we published updates to the 2016, 207 plugins and published a new 2018 version of this popular plugin for Navisworks. The update incorporates fixes for some customer reported issues, as well as bringing the loader in line with the latest version of Navisworks. The plugin is available to all Navisworks customers with an active subscription (which must be associated with your Autodesk ID to allow downloads – speak to your account admin if you can’t access), and is available with immediate effect. More detail is available on the app store.
Here are the direct links to the Navisworks app store:
Annual product launch is always a busy time of year for the Navisworks team and this year has been no different. We've completed some interesting projects this year, so here we would like to introduce them to you in some detail. You've asked us to improve our connectivity and our interoperability and we heard you! Navisworks 2018 continues to improve our BIM workflow integration, with a particular focus on Revit, Recap 360 and IFC. Underpinning this are three key themes that describe our approach to developing Navisworks:
Current
Making sure that Navisworks stays up to date with the latest file formats and data types (e.g. we recently added extensive IFC improvements; and added support for .vue format)
Integrated
Integrating Navisworks with Autodesk cloud solutions (e.g. Navsiworks integration with BIM 360 Glue), plus integration with other Autodesk desktop solutions and complementary suites products (e.g. we invested in Navisworks integration with Revit via the underlay feature for Revit 2018; integration with Recap 360 Pro).
Quality
Fixing blocking bugs and significant regressions.
Revit 2018 & Navisworks 2018 – together at last!
Two years ago, with the release of AutoCAD 2016, we introduced the ability to bring your Navisworks model directly into the design app. Ever since, we have been working closely with our friends in the Revit team to offer the same capability with the release of Revit 2018. Using the 'Coordination Model' feature you will now be able to open NWC & NWD files and import them using model origin or shared coordinates. Once in Revit you can visualise the coordination model in plan, elevation, section or 3D view.
This was a major project that required us to fold Navisworks components (aka Navisworks Core Engine) directly into the Revit codebase.. We think it was worth the effort - now you can bring all the 60+ supported Navisworks formats directly into your Revit projects, with the ability to work with the same huge datasets that you can in Navisworks. Best of all, this performs the same as Navisworks and wont cripple your working environment in Revit.
This workflow could fundamentally change how your project teams collaborate. Rather than the design team or supply chain working independently and then coordinating with other team members after they have produced their designs, the Revit user will now be able to design within the context of the whole project view. This is a big step towards the holy grail of 'clash avoidance' – project team members creating coordinated, clash free data as a seamless part of the design and detailing process.
Further to this, the Revit folks are very excited that this unlocks the "direct context" workflow, where huge models, such as the city of Berlin shown below, can now be used as context for your projects at a scale that was previously impossible!
Fabrication parts in Navisworks
Autodesk continues to invest in building out our fabrication and detailing capability on the Revit platform to extend design development through fabrication level of detail and coordination to installation on site. Navisworks is a key part of this workflow, and we introduced support for the new Revit Fabrication parts properties as part of the 2018 release.
IFC Interoperability Enhancements
IFC is an increasingly important format and there are some significant improvements wrapped into the 2018 release. A completely new IFC file reader is integrated within Navisworks, which leverages the work that the Revit team have done in support of IFC.
This doesn't mean that we now only support IFC from Revit (as some of you have asked). Now, Navisworks has the benefit of parity with Revit because we are using the same open source code to handle IFC files. This translates to greater consistency for your workflows and illustrates our investment into the support of the open source format.
You still have the option of using the older Navisworks IFC reader, but from 2018, the Revit IFC reader is now the default. Direct benefits of this include support for additional IFC property and object types, such as IFCSpace and IFCZone, plus PSets and improved IFC hierarchy handling. In addition, more than 80% of our backlog of IFC bugs were addressed.
Some of you will know that we introduced this as in its first release as an update last year. Since then, we have worked directly with our customers and made improvements to the handling of property data and organisation. We continue to listen out for more, so keep the feedback coming!
Recap 360 and Reality Capture workflows
Bring your Navisworks model directly into the ReCap 360 Pro desktop product (see the reality capture team's blog here). This lets you visualize your as-designed data from Navisworks directly alongside your as built data in Recap 360 Pro 'Real Views', enabling a set of quality and progress-checking workflows by comparing planned and actual datasets. Alternatively, if you want to bring your ReCap models into Navisworks, the current integration will now support filtered ReCap points. This lets you work with a subset of the point cloud data, so speeding up review and verification workflows by importing just what you need for your process.
This video highlights the possibilities for construction workflows where progress scanning is blended with the as-designed data for immediate review and coordination purposes that will benefit the entire team.
General fixes, product stability and performance enhancements
We continue to invest in the stability, performance and quality of Navisworks – the new 'optimize on load' function has a dramatic impact on file size when working with previous versions of Navisworks as many of you still are. One customer reported that a Navisworks 2016 file of 4.7gb was reduced to just 200mb using this function– saving them several minutes every time the model was opened. We always encourage you to work with the latest versions, hopefully this is another reason why that's such a good idea!
Navisworks and BIM 360
Using Navisworks together with Glue, Field and Layout opens up real value for construction teams. By leveraging the power of 'connected BIM' – where the desktop and the cloud work in unison, project teams can realise great savings in time and cost through greater collaboration and anytime, anywhere access to the as-designed data you create in Navisworks. This year we further simplified that workflow, by integrating the Field connection directly into the ribbon interface for Navsiworks. Now its even easier to pull field data through your project by connecting to BIM 360, and bring in progress or commissioning data into your Navisworks model for your analysis workflows.
Final thoughts…
So, that's the Navisworks 2018 release. We hope you find the additions and improvements useful.
This year Amar spoke at Autodesk University about the Autodesk Desktop App, and showcased a new experience for updating our products, integrated into the desktop and providing a smoother way to access updates releases and the like. Navisworks 2018 is part of that, and as the business as a whole transitions into a subscription model as well, we're looking into delivering more frequent updates and less 'big bang' annual releases that we have traditionally done. Whilst this changes the way we deliver updates, hopefully you can see from above that we're continuing to work on the themes we've set out.
And of course in addition to our own work we continue to maintain our API. Navisworks alongside BIM 360 has an extensive API and we have many customers and partners that are building on the core product. We've seen many partners realise many workflows this way, and the Navisworks app store has several examples of some great functionality that leverage the API for specific workflows.
As always, we look forward to your feedback. Thanks and enjoy this release.
You only need to do fancy renderings to win bids right? Show off to the client how their shiny new project is going to look?
A common misconception about rendering is that it's a way to get a computer generated model as close to the real thing as possible, and it takes a really long time, so therefore it's only for the most important people, the clients. Well it can do, I know several releases of Navisworks ago our standard advice for getting a high quality render out was set it up then go home for the night, and hope for the best that it would all be ready in the morning and you wouldn't run out of memory or find your hardware blue screened on you.
Now I know a few of you are nodding your head at this and many of you have probably already started to embrace A360 Cloud Rendering, a way to send your model to us, get on with other work, then receive a link to a nice shiny render in your email. Once you have done a render it's pretty easy to change settings and re-render it bigger or a different type of render such as a panorama, and even easier to download it or share it with your company or the wider world. You can also send up to cloud rendering directly from within AutoCAD, Revit, Navisworks, Fusion 360 and 3DS Max or upload AutoCAD and Fusion 360 files to the Rendering in A360 website.
So what has all this got to do with Health and Safety? Well one of the biggest challenges with implementing a health and safety policy is ensuring everyone understands what is being asked of them, this could be due to terminology, interpretation of documents, or simple language barriers as we see on projects around the world. Visual communication is essential to getting a point across, so using renderings, visualisations and anything to back up potential dangers or ensure that workers understand their restrictions before they go on site is something that should be embraced.
In the example below we have a model that includes a terrain and site plan from Infraworks exported as an FBX, alongside a bridge created with Civil 3D, Revit and Dynamo, all imported into Navisworks. Then I simply moved to the cabin of the crane and press Render in Cloud, you can then decide to export still images, panoramas or stereo panoramas (for use with Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard). This can be a much easier way to get the site team to understand what they need to do or what the site may look like than using 2D drawings or upskilling them in navigating 3D models.
Interoperability in the software used for project design and construction is vital to the collaborative process required by the AEC industry. More than that, interoperability is good business for AEC firms and asset owners. Our recent agreement with Trimble to increase interoperability by exchanging APIs and developer tools is one more demonstration of Autodesk's commitment to offering our customers the best workflows possible and to improving the way buildings and infrastructure are designed, built and managed.
Nearly half (49%) of contractors surveyed in a 2014 McGraw Hill Construction Smart Market Report rank collaborative BIM processes high on their list for BIM investments, citing standardized deliverables and repeatable workflows as "vital to improving the effectiveness of the broader ecosystem."
We heard that! Expanding software interoperability and supporting leading industry standards, such as IFC and COBie, helps AEC professionals deliver higher quality work more safely, on time, and on budget. Sure, its good business for software vendors too, but with an open approach such as ours, project teams choose the best tools for the job, ensuring a more accurate flow of information crucial to meeting today's complex project requirements.
Autodesk has long been focused on furthering interoperability across vendors and platforms. Our interest in open ways of working started in the 1980's—long before anyone had ever heard of BIM and (frighteningly) maybe years before many of our current software users were even born! Let's review:
Autodesk was founded on an open platform: the PC. In the earliest days of CAD, most vendors offered tightly coupled hardware/software systems that were proprietary. But Autodesk customers could run AutoCAD® on any PC.
The DXF file format is still one of the most efficient and popular ways of sharing CAD graphic and attribute data and the DXF schema is available for all to use.
In 2008, Computerworld predicted that "reading on screen" and "social everything" would take off. (Imagine!) It's also the year, Autodesk signed an interoperability agreement with Bentley Systems to expand interoperability between our portfolios -- exchanging software libraries, including Autodesk RealDWG, to improve the ability to read and write DWG and DGN formats in mixed environments with greater, fidelity and supporting the reciprocal use of available Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
No one beats Autodesk for export and import certifications. See for yourself by looking at our list of certifications that support the IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) standard. You'll find the IFC standard used in many Autodesk products, including Revit, AutoCAD Civil3D, Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Navisworks, and Autodesk BIM 360 Glue.
COBie (Construction Operations Building Information Exchange) is critical to simplify the capture of project handover data. The Autodesk COBie Extension lets you pull COBie-compliant information directly from a Revit model. In the COBie for Design challenge organized by buildingSmart, Autodesk scored a perfect 100 percent by producing a complete COBie deliverable that required zero additional processing or edits.
Pulling COBie-compliant information directly from Autodesk Navisworks is now available, which supports the export of non-Revit and infrastructure information to the COBie standard format.
In 2015, Autodesk introduced the Forge platform to help foster a cloud-connected developer community, making design and engineering information available in virtually any format and enabling build-on functionality with open APIs. Forge includes APIs to tools like Autodesk BIM 360 to bring more of the ecosystem into a construction project, expand their insight, and improve decision making capabilities.
Now, with the Autodesk and Trimble agreement on interoperability, AEC professionals can look forward to more tightly integrated processes, further enhancing the ability for project teams to collaborate more seamlessly while using the products they choose.
Just like ComputerWorld understood the potential for the internet way back in 2008, we know that our customers don't want to feel that their data is "locked" in a specific application or with a specific vendor. The notion of a single tool for a single job is rapidly becoming antiquated -- data needs to flow across teams, projects, and applications. Interoperability helps to drive a tightly connected Building Information Modeling (BIM) process on projects. Our commitment to keeping the open in OpenBIM truly open is unwavering.
To learn more about how BIM 360 supports interoperability with support for over 50 different file formats, please look at the BIM 360 website.
As BIM becomes more entrenched in construction, processes are starting to move from paper based methods to a 3D environment to provide benefits in communication and health and safety. Think about a standard morning briefing to your workers - what is the most effective way to show people the areas they should and shouldn't go, and the position of materials and welfare facilities? A paper 2D drawing with highlighter markers, or a fully interactive 3D model?
Obviously the first consideration is time. A process that is going to take weeks won't get used. Luckily, the tools in Infraworks allow you to do this quickly and easily. You can use Infraworks to select an area on a map to quickly create a model with the available terrain, aerial imagery, buildings, roads and water. You select an area of up to 200 square kilometres, in any shape. When I first saw this a couple of years ago, my mind was blown, and even now I love the fact we have access to technology like this!
You can then augment this with your own data, surveys, underground services, Revit, IFC and DWG models to create an accurate picture of the selected site. Simply sketch the barriers, material layout zones, safe and unsafe areas and add machinery models and material piles in real time.
This article was intended to start as a quick overview to show how you create excavations. Since I haven't yet talked about Infraworks, you get this tip as a bonus! One of the things you may want to communicate is excavations for your construction, and you can now do this by creating a coverage area and changing the Smooth Radius in the Properties to 0 (or close to 0 if you want to show a taper). Check out this video.
Let us know if you see value of 3D site planning and any success or screenshots you want to share! [email protected]
Compiled by Autodesk thought leaders: Phil Bernstein - VP Strategic Industry Relations, AEC Diego Tamburini- Senior Industry Program Manager, Manufacturing Terry Bennett- Senior Industry Strategist, Civil Infrastructure Erin Rae Hoffer- Senior Industry Program Manager, Building Paige Rodgers- Senior Manager, Communications & Partnerships, Autodesk Foundation Emma Stewart- Director, Sustainability Solutions Catherine Palmer- Industry Marketing Manager, Awareness, Reputation & Thought Leadership
1. Pressure intensifies on construction execution and prices as lack of capacity in mature markets persist.
Image courtesy of Mir | Project Name: My Micro NY | Design: nArchitects
2. Construction sites look more like open-air factories with automation, modular assembly, and 3D printing.
3. Green is the new black! City planners look to triple-bottom-line analysis for best decisions on resiliency, sustainability, and economic vitality.
4. As urban area populations swell, demand for connected housing with access to schools, jobs, transit and health care is in high demand.
Image Courtesy of Enterprise Community Partners
5. Water that was once lost to leaks, discharges, and wasteful use can now be found and used locally. Read more about “Local Water”.
6. Policy makers and owners increase requirements for modern 3D design and construction technology (e.g. Building Information Modeling) to advance industry productivity and improve capital project outcomes.
7. Services to optimize energy and operations of buildings start to proliferate as The Internet of Things connects and gathers data from more and more building products, like security, HVAC, lighting, elevators and escalators, electrical and plumbing.
8. Emerging economies will advance efficiency in design, construction, and operations processes globally, using green investments made possible by the COP21 Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
9. Engineering and architecture are recognized as noble professions, helping to solve epic global challenges.
10. Reality can be captured, augmented, and made virtual through big data to create a digital mirror of the physical world in near real time.
As you can see from these trends, there will be many significant changes to building and infrastructure design, construction, and operations.
The new releases of AutoCAD take a big step forward in improving design quality and speeding up coordination. For many years the standard way of working with multiple stakeholders has been the humble xref, bringing someone else's file into your environment and designing around it. This allows you to avoid clashes by designing with the other trades and other user's files in context. This process tends to involve others providing their released working files via data management solutions on an occasional basis, normally at project milestones.
With the AutoCAD 2016 release (including AutoCAD based products such as Civil 3D, CADmep, Advanced Steel and AutoCAD MEP), you'll be able to load a Navisworks NWD or NWC file as an xref, or alternatively a live BIM 360 Glue project! But what does that mean for you?
Working with Navisworks and BIM 360 Glue allows you to work in a more organized process. We often see people working with xref's that can be weeks or even months out of date. This can lead to design work taking place in the same space where another trade has already done their work but only since the last released file. This leads to clashes further down the line where two trades have designed objects in the same place. When this needs to be rectified, perhaps weeks later, the designer will have to spend time familiarising themselves with the area again and why they made the decisions they did. By loading the weekly coordination model you minimize the risk of designing objects in the same physical location as someone else and therefore speed up the design process and the need to make changes, which saves the entire design team time and money.
In AutoCAD 2016, you will also see improved performance, the Navisworks viewing engine, that was built from the ground up to optimize performance on large models. Now integrated into AutoCAD, you'll be able to view the referenced Navisworks/BIM 360 file as a separate process to the design files, speeding up performance of navigation and allowing AutoCAD to get on with what the product does best, design!
So in a Navisworks environment, your VDC, BIM, design manager or coordinator can collect all the files together in a single place, save them as an NWD, and load as an xref to get on with designing. My personal favourite feature is the ability to set transparency on the file which means you can see where you are in relation to the surrounding design without it getting in the way.
To see how the new functionality with AutoCAD 2016 works with BIM 360, watch the video below:
If you're using BIM 360 Glue, this can speed this work up even further. If your design teams are "gluing" their models on a daily basis or more frequently, then what are the chances of you accidentally designing and creating a clash? You also have the benefit of loading the pinpoint locations of any clashes speeding your resolution up even further.
This is not Clash Detection, this is Clash Avoidance!
There's only one topic of conversation in the office this morning, how many times have you seen it?
If you have no idea what I'm on about, you need to stop what you are doing for 2 minutes and watch this.
Back now? How many people just clicked on it to watch it again? Thought so!
Anyway, as a massive Star Wars fan (geek), I've been far too giddy about this for too long as anyone who follows me on Twitter will realise. So last night I was ready to publish a blog about the cool new features in AutoCAD using Navisworks and BIM 360 technology, but immediately realised that will have to wait till next week… Priorities!
I've been lucky enough to present a couple of Star Wars themed classes at Autodesk University in Vegas and more recently BIM Show Live in the UK about workflows between products, using Star Wars themed datasets. I wanted to share some of the videos created for these presentations. The last presentation was about how Han and Chewie (I can't believe Chewie got the best line in the trailer!), had to renovate the Millennium Falcon after winning it from Lando. So first up, design review in BIM 360 Glue: -
Then quickly setting up Search Sets for advanced Navisworks use, with help from a familiar friend…
Setting up custom properties to collect in BIM 360 Field…
Point Cloud Analysis in Autodesk Revit using the Point Layout add in, guess who ran into this wall…
And finally we found the Millennium Falcon at Pinewood studios using Infraworks 360
Thanks to everyone who helped me pull together datasets, from Dace Campbell and his USB charing GNK to David Light and his amazing Revit RFA of the Falcon and many more!
I recently had the pleasure of participating in the AEC Hackathon in Seattle, as well as attending the recent BIMForum in Dallas. At both Autodesk-sponsored events, I was inspired by the sheer amount of creativity and enthusiasm exuded by AEC professionals and software developers, looking to push BIM – and our industry – further ahead into the future with new tools and processes. Some tools drew a fair amount of excitement. In particular, drones and 3-D printing continue to ride a wave of hype, joined by a resurging interest in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, to extend and leverage today's BIM tools and processes. AEC Hackers and BIMForum presenters are definitely having fun, inspiring colleagues, and pushing the envelope!
Yet, despite the exciting advances for our industry, I was also equally frustrated by the way new (or in the case of VR/AR, new again) technologies were positioned, pitched, and presented. All too often, new technologies were touted as game-changing, with barely a nod to the game they purportedly change.
All too often, "innovators," seduced by shiny technology, leap into technical details and features and functionalities without thoughtful exploration or explanation of the context of real-world business problems. Simply put: too much sizzle, not enough steak. AEC professionals, supposed benefactors of innovation, are left wondering, "What's in it for me?" Unfortunately, this is all too common in innovation, and this oversight when developing new technologies casts a pall on valid R&D when observed by the conservative AEC industry. To claim a new technology is a solution, or the solution, without clear analysis of the problem to be solved, relegates these potential "tools" to the mere status of "toys" in the eyes of practitioners who could likely most benefit from them.
Taking a cue from "Solution Selling"® methodology, I offer to the hopeful envelope-pushers and dynamic pitchmen of new technology: To be successful with your innovation, diagnose before you prescribe!
You wouldn't go to a doctor and expect a prescription handed to you for medication before you can sit down with a medical professional and describe what's ailing you! Why would an AEC "innovator" attempt to do that?
Before experimenting with and applying a solution, and long before touting it as a heroic fix, you need to understand the pain faced by real-world AEC professionals. Be specific, and describe who has this pain, and when. Analyze the underlying reasons for the pain, and dig further to find the reasons behind those reasons. Further, study and document the impact of this pain in an organization, across a project team, or between firms: what bad things happen to others because of it?
If possible, try to quantify the pain and its impacts in real monetary value. Ask specific "MOM" questions, like how much, how often, or how many times the pain occurs. Document this estimated pain, because if you arrive at a successful solution, this is what you can use to calculate a return on any investment in your innovation.
Finally, only after having documented the pain, reasons, impact, and value, try to document a vision for new and extended capabilities from real-world professionals expressing their pain. If they were in charge, what would they want done, and how would it address or mitigate their pain?
Then, and only then, are you ready to brainstorm, hack, experiment, research, develop, pitch, demonstrate, differentiate, present, and ride a wave of success that cannot be mistaken for empty, irrelevant hype.
The split between those who grasp this and those who don't was clearly evident at recent BIM events.
As an AEC Hackathon judge, I was sincerely encouraged by teams that developed their "hacks" in the context of real-world problems. Winning teams were handsomely rewarded, with two top prizes going to teams that focused on solving pain faced by contractors in the field. Their solutions weren't crowded with shiny toys, but were attractive to AEC practitioners because they were relevant and useful. By contrast, other teams enamored with new technologies who didn't articulate their solutions in the context of a business case were summarily dismissed. Their ideas may have been fun to explore, and amusing to watch, but so are circus clowns; ultimately and rightfully they took a back seat to serious teams sincerely mitigating pain to move our industry forward.
This dichotomy between the true innovators and the pretenders was also clear at the BIMForum. The most successful presentations weren't the ones who discussed new technologies simply for the sake of being "new" or "better;" the best ones were those that described their work by thoughtfully including discussion of the problems faced by designers, builders, and owners.
There is certainly nothing wrong with experimentation and exploration for its own sake. But when it comes to developing innovative tools and processes for the AEC industry, where real pains exist and real dollars are at stake, successful solutions can't just be pretty to look at; they must prove themselves to be relevant. The solutions prescribed by innovators must follow a careful diagnosis of the problem.
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.
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