New Symbol in Navisworks 2012 Generated NWC Files

As some of you may or may not have noticed, Navisworks (2012) generated NWC files (meaning you opened or appended say a DWG file) have a new symbol in the NWC name….the # symbol.  This is something new for 2012 NWC files and is meant to differentiate NWC files created as Cache vs. NWC files exported from other programs.

So when you see the # symbol in the file name, leave it there.  Navisworks doesn’t do anything special with the file or anything, it’s just a way to differentiate the files.  If you delete the # symbol, Navisworks will just recreate the NWC again with the # symbol. 

The reason behind this is in the past, there were cases where users would export their DWG files to an NWC file and place them alongside the DWG files in the same folder with the same file name. They would then open the DWG file in Navisworks, thereby overwriting the exported NWC file with an automatically generated NWC.  So by automatically putting the # symbol in the name, this issue should be avoided.

Thanks to Autodesk support for clarifying the new naming convention!

Clashes Not Showing Color in Navisworks 2012

I’ve run across a little issue with Navisworks 2012 where the clashes sometimes will not show the actual color of the Clash Status…i.e. Red for new, Orange for Active, etc.  The issue seems to be with the Lighting for the Render Style.  If the Render Style is set to Full Lights, clashes show up solid gray like this…

In order to fix this, all you need to do is change the Render Style to utilize Scene Lights (or Head Light or No Lights) and then the clashes will show up properly…

This is a defect and Autodesk Support is saying that the Development Team is aware of the issue.  Now we’ll just have to keep our fingers and toes crossed that a fix is released soon.  Once a fix has been released, I’ll post an update.

Navisworks 2012 Available for Download

I know I’m tardy on this, it’s been a very busy last few weeks.  If you’re a subscription customer, you now should have the ability to download your Navisworks 2012 product via the Subscription Center.  If you aren’t on subscription and/or would like to try out Navisworks 2012, you can download a trial HERE.

Navisworks 2012 has some nice new features and I will be blogging about them in the coming weeks.