Beyond Design: the Construction and BIM blog

New AEC API Developer Blog

We know that many of you are looking to improve productivity and access to your information models using the API. This new AEC DevBlog will cover Revit, Navisworks and other AEC and BIM technologies and their APIs from Autodesk.

So far there are already posts about the following topics:-

• New features in the Navisworks 2013 .NET API
• How to access the Revit SDK
• How to get a primitive from solid of Navisworks
• More details on the BIM Coordinator 

Head to the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed for new posts: -

http://adndevblog.typepad.com/aec/

You can also ask API related questions through the Navisworks API forum.

BIM helping new homeowners

When people think about BIM, and the use of Revit and Navisworks they normally consider the larger scale projects they are used for like offices, schools and hospitals. This article shows a great way in which both products are being used on a housing project to visualize the project to new owners, analyze the schedule to speed up construction and help in organize volunteers according to their skillsets.

http://buildipedia.com/in-studio/building-materials-methods/bim-helps-habitat-for-humanity-partner-family-take-a-virtual-tour-of-their-new-home

Do you have any projects utilizing BIM workflows using Autodesk software you want to share? Contact us using the links on the left.

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.

Autodesk Navisworks 2013 products released

I've been working with Navisworks products for 7 years, Paul even longer, and I'll be honest, this is the most excited I've been for a product release in that time. I think the features we've added to this year's Autodesk Navisworks 2013 release are the biggest leap forward we have had in all that time.

Here's a quick overview of the main highlights and we'll be covering all of these in more depth in the coming days and weeks with more blogs, tips, videos and more!

• Improved Revit^® Interoperability
  • Native RVT file support
  • Hierarchy representation
  • Category, family, type, instance
  • Improved level association
  • Subparts named by material
• Grids & Levels Support
  • Display of Revit grids & levels in scene view
  • Hover-over intersection for grid reference
  • Head-up-display (HUD) position readout
• 4D / Scheduling Improvements
  • Drag-and-drop sets/selections/objects to tasks
  • Auto-add tasks from sets, respecting folder hierarchy
  • Export task hierarchy to Microsoft^® Project XML
  • Editable task hierarchy
  • Improved user interface
• 5D / Cost Simulation
  • Associate costs with schedule tasks
• Clash Detection Enhancements
  • Clash result locations by level and grid reference
  • Sort results by grid reference, level, proximity, etc.
  • Quick filter results by status, level, assigned to, etc.
  • Undo support
  • Improved user interface
  • Comprehensive API
• Improved Selection Tools
  • New Selection Inspector Tool
  • Improvements to Sets window
  • Support for drag-and-drop
• Additional File Format Support
  • Siemens NX
  • Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks
  • Dassault Systèmes CATIA^®
  • Microsoft Project 2010
  • Primavera^® P6 v8
  • Graphisoft^® ArchiCAD 14 & 15
  • Faro 4.8
• Vault Integration Enhancements
  • Open & append all supported file formats via the vault
  • Vault browser docking window in Navisworks
  • Advanced search tools
• Navisworks Freedom Enhancements
  • Sectioning support
  • Embedded Database property support

Autodesk Navisworks 2013 will be available very shortly from http://www.autodesk.com/navisworks

Tell us which features you'd like to know more about using the comments below, and we'll try to prioritize these first.

Autodesk AEC DevCamp – Calling anyone interested in using the API to develop for Navisworks, Revit and Civil 3D

Are you interested in customizing, extending or integrating with Autodesk® Revit^®, AutoCAD^® Civil 3D^®, Navisworks^®,  technologies around Autodesk's BIM 360 vision, including Vault Collaboration AEC and Revit Server, new Autodesk web services and mobile technologies, and more?

If yes then the Autodesk AEC DevCamp is for you!

• When: June 6-7, with a DevLab on June 8
• Where: Boston, Massachusetts -- near Autodesk's AEC Division headquarters
• Cost: early bird discount fee of US $500 valid to April 30, 2012, thereafter US $600

The 2 day DevCamp offers training for beginners and experts on the APIs of each of the products listed above. You get to talk to Autodesk product management and engineering staff, and to meet fellow developers like you. There is also a Business Development track for those steering their company's strategic direction and investments as well as Autodesk specific sales and marketing topics. 

Following on from the DevCamp we are holding a day long DevLab. The DevLab has no agenda as it's all about spending quality time working with you on your specific needs and challenges. ADN DevTech engineers covering Autodesk technologies – Revit, Civil 3D, Navisworks and more - are available to help you – 1 to 1. Bring your laptop and work on your code as you'd normally do in your own office. With DevLab you have a team of experts available to review your code, answer your questions, and make suggestions.

CALL TO ACTION – let us know you're interested!

To receive more information on the DevCamp and DevLab, including the detailed agenda and registration instructions, please send an email to Melrose Ross on email address [email protected] giving your full name and company name.

Cleaning up Revit files for Export to Navisworks

If you are having difficulties exporting large Revit files to NWC, or just want to clean up your files prior to export then this article gives some tips about how.

1. Create a new View in Revit specifically for Navisworks, then in the Visibility Overrides of the view switch off things you won't need such as Lines, or specific details that won't be needed for your TimeLiner Simulation or Clash Detection.
   
   

   Once you have created your View, you can save this as a template for future use.
   
   
   Then when exporting, change Export to 'Current View' in the settings.
   
   

2. Now look at your Navisworks Export Settings; is there anything you don't need - rooms, URL's, or even linked files?
3. If you do have linked files, do you need them all? Just keep the ones you need. If you are having problems when exporting files with many links, do they export correctly individually?
4. You can use the 'Purge Unused' button on the Manage tab of Revit to delete unused families or unused family types from the model. You will be able to select which items are Purged before proceeding.
   
   

   You may want to open each individual linked file and purge it until there is nothing left to purge; this may take two or three passes. After all individual linked models have been purged, purge the main model and try again to export.

Other things to check if you still have problems exporting

1. Does Revit needs a restart? If you are working in the application all day and then try to export at the end of the day, you have been potentially caching your project all day. Save the project, restart Revit, reopen the file and try to export. If you still have problems and the machine has been left on for days or weeks then a restart of the machine may also be a good idea.
2. As with any memory hungry operation, try to minimize the number of other programs competing for resources.

We know there other methods you use to pare down your files - please get in touch if you feel there's any that you can't live without that we should include in this article.

Linking Animations to Timeliner tasks

A quick Monday morning update. One of the most powerful ways to use Navisworks is to use features in conjunction with each other. Time-based clashing, search sets and the appearance profiler and linking animations to Timeliner. There's a long list of ways and reasons why you might want to link an object or set of objects in a Timeliner task to an Animation, opening doors at the right time, moving panels for a snazzy animation, rotating a crane into position amongst others.

Here's how you do it.

1. Create an animation using Animator, an object moving, rotating, changing scale or a combination of these.
2. In the Tasks tab in Timeliner, change the Column Set to Extended, this will make all the Advanced columns available.



3. Select an Animator Scene/Animation in the Animation column to link the object to.
4. In Animation behaviour, decide whether you want to 'Scale' the Animation to the length of the Task, 'Match Start' to the beginning of the task, or 'Match End' of the task. Just remember how long your animation is in comparison to the task, Animation default units is seconds, Timeliner can be days or weeks, meaning you might want to scale it to the length of the task.



5. Easy as that, we'll talk about some ways in which you might want to use this feature over the next few weeks.

We welcome any feedback on how you use this, or questions about why you would use this, just use the links in the left column to contact us.

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!

How can I Schedule in Minutes?

We received this question the other day:

"I am doing a Marketing and Presentation Sequencing for a Wall Panelization company in NC. Since I don't have MS Project or Primavera, I am creating a TimeLiner schedule by using the Selection Sets as added tasks to populate TimeLiner. Now normally I would do all of my "Timing" and dates within TimeLiner, since none of my anticipated TIME PERIODS would be less than 1-Hour. BUT...............The Contractor wants to show setting 12 "Panels" per day, which over an 8-hr work period is 40 mins. Since the smallest time increment I can adjust to in TimeLiner is one hour using the Gantt chart, how can I achieve this?" Mike Maloney, Virtual World Designs

So I've created a quick tutorial on how this can be done. Take a look:

Mike is absolutely right though, the Gantt chart currently only enables you to snap to the nearest hour for task durations. So Mike's question actually provides some really good feedback which we can use to help further refine the product to handle such use cases.

So thanks again Mike, and anyone can ask a question like this through the Suggest a Topic link on the left. Keep 'em coming!