Navisworks File viewable in Glue Offline

I’m sure by now many of you have heard of Autodesk’s BIM 360 Glue service. Since it’s a cloud based service, you need WiFi (or Data) access to be able to access the cloud and the models you’ve “Glued”.  It’s also a paid-for service, which many people do not have…yet.

However, you can download the iPad app (yes, it’s iOS only at this point) and still view Navisworks models on your iPad with Glue!  You don’t’ need to upload anything to the web/cloud, its all local and done through iTunes. Here’s a little sample video showing the process (no audio)…

Navisworks file on iPad with BIM 360 Glue

So for those of you looking to view your Navisworks files on an iPad, this is probably the best way to do it for FREE!

Navisworks 2014 gets QTO

As you’ve probably seen in the new features list, whether it was here on my blog or over at Beyond Design, Quantification has come to Navisworks 2014.  I’ll be doing posts on the new Quantification features in the future, but wanted to get one thing out that I know is going to be asked…does it only come with Manage?

NO!

Whether you use Simulate or Manage, you will have the ability to use the Quantification tools within Navisworks 2014.

System Requirements for Autodesk Navisworks 2014

Below is a grab of the System Requirements for Navisworks 2014…this pertains to Simulate and Manage. 

Please, please note that Windows XP is NOT listed!!  If you are still using XP (or even Vista, which I rarely run into), you’re going to need to upgrade your OS!  Not to say that Navisworks won’t install or run, but any issues relating back to the OS will not be supported.  Also note that Windows 8 32bit is not listed…meaning it’s not supported.  Autodesk has a page dedicated to OS compatibility for Navisworks, all versions - Operating system compatibility for Autodesk Navisworks

System Requirements for Autodesk Navisworks 2014

• Windows® 8 (64-bit) or Windows® 7 (32 or 64-bit) Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate edition (recommended) (Service Pack 1)
• Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon™ processor 3.0 GHz (or higher) with SSE2 technology
• 512 MB RAM (2 GB or greater recommended)
• 10 GB free disk space for installation
• Direct3D 9® and OpenGL® capable graphics card with Shader Model 2 (minimum)
• 1,280 x 800 VGA display with true color (1,920 x 1,080 monitor and 32-bit video display adapter recommended)
• Microsoft Mouse-compliant pointing device
• Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7.0 or later web browser

What’s New in Navisworks 2014

Ah, the spring time (in the United States anyway) when the weather starts to change (unless you live in the Midwest like me, still feels like December!) and Autodesk rolls out the new products.  Navisworks has some nice features in 2014 and this should be an interesting year talking to customers about the new features.

The guys over at Beyond Design put together a nice little list of the key features in Navisworks 2014.  You can read their post HERE.

Taking a step away from the key features they show, here’s a little list (not a complete list) of some of the other things you’ll see in Navisworks 2014…

• Timeliner Selection Set Export
  • This is interesting…you can export your Task List to create a folder of Selection Sets that match the name of the Tasks.  The Sets are then automatically attached to the Tasks. At this point, you’d need to add items to each Selection Set.
    • This should make attaching/mapping objects to tasks much, much easier!
• Timeliner Format Update
  • You can now utilize Primavera P6 v8.2! (this was a big issue with 2013)
• Preserve Clash Highlighting in Viewpoints reporting
  • A feature that sneaked into 2013 via SP2 was the ability to save your Clash Report to Viewpoints and keep the visual fidelity of the Clash View. Well, it’s native in 2014! You even have the ability to choose if you want that functionality via a checkbox.  It even keeps the Redlines! (which it didn’t in 2013)
• Clash Elements Different Colors
  • Basically, you can set Item 1 and Item 2 to be different colors instead of them both using the Clash Status color.
• Clash Comments
  • The Clash Results now include a column that shows if a Clash has a Comment and how many.
• Clash Filters
  • You can filter the Clashes to only show what you currently have selected.  New for 2014…
    • Exclusive – if you have the 2 clashing elements selected, this will show clash results where both of the clashing items are included in your current item selection.
    • Inclusive – if you have 1 or 2 clashing elements selected, this filter will show clash results where one or both or the clashing items are included in your current item selection.
      • I can see people using the Inclusive quite a bit.
• Clash Report Filter
  • If you have a Filter applied to your Clash Results, you can export a Report of just the Filtered Clashes.
• Clash Isolation Settings
  • The Dim Other and Hide Other are no longer part of a drop-down menu, they are buttons next to each other.
• Measurements (Nice enhancements here!)
  • We can now do measurements were we can lock the X, Y or Z axis from the first point selected.
  • We can now measure in a Perpendicular (huge!) or Parallel alignment to the surface of an object.
    • I’ll definitely be doing a video for this one soon!
  • We also get some new visual cues when selecting a Face (small rectangle behind the cursor), Edge (small line behind the cursor) or Point (an “X” behind the cursor).
    • The visual cues replace the cursor changing, the cursor now keep a “+” as it’s graphic.
• Rendering
  • Wow, there sooooo much to this now that we can use the same Materials as the other Autodesk software and the same rendering engine.
  • We also get the Ray Trace tool that was introduced in Revit 2013.
• Sectioning
  • You can now “limit” your sectioning planes/box to elements you have selected.
    • Oh, this is nice when you want to show a section cut and the limit to be 1st Floor to 2nd Floor!

So throw list together with what the guys and Beyond Design have (Quantification, Rendering, ReCap (point clouds), etc.) and that’s pretty much what your going to see in Navisworks 2014!

Oh, I should note…Clash items listed above are only available in Navisworks Manage, everything else will be available in Navisworks Simulate as well.

More to come soon once I get Navisworks loaded on my main computer

Reveal Hidden Elements for Navisworks

This is more of a “wish-list” item that came up during a discussion with a customer training I was doing. 

The question always comes up…”how do you turn on specific elements that have been hidden?”  Well, the answer(s) isn’t the best…you can look through the Selection Tree and look for elements that have been “grayed” out, Unhide All (then re-hide the objects that are supposed to stay hidden), make the object/objects a Selection Set so you can manage them a little easier, etc.  Basically, there isn’t a good way.

One of the users brought up the idea of having a “Reveal Hidden Elements” mode like Revit has, which is a great idea.  Here’s to hoping that Navisworks 2014 (whenever that comes out) will have such a “feature” to help with object visibility.

Hidden Update in Service Pack 2

Well, at least it seems like it was a hidden update to me.  What I’m talking about is a feature that people have been asking about for a while…being able to save a Clash Report to Viewpoints in Navisworks. 

Technically it’s not a new feature, you’ve been able to do it for as long as I can remember.  But, it’s never REALLY worked.  The resulting saved Viewpoints never kept the “visual” settings when looking at the Clashes in the Results tab of the Clash Detection panel.  So the results were really just the camera position with elements in their native color and none of the elements in front of the clash hidden or transparent or wireframed or etc.

Here’s the Clash Results Viewpoint (while having the Results tab “active” in Clash Detection)…

Prior to Navisworks 2013 Service Pack/Update 2, this was the result of the “Saved Viewpoint” when the Report was exported to Viewpoints…

And now, here’s what you get with Navisworks 2013 after Service Pack/Update 2 is installed…

FINALLY, the report exported to “Viewpoints” actually shows the same view settings as the Results tab does!  This means that when the NWF is Published to a NWD, someone with Freedom (or Simulate) can actually review clashes!

But, there is a bit of bad news.  It appears that any Redlines that are created on the Clash do not come through.  However, if you create a Redline Tag, the associated Comment WILL come through and be available in the Viewpoint…which doesn’t really help since you can’t see the Redline Tag.  Also, if you add a Comment and/or an Assign(ment), those will also come through and be available in the Viewpoint.

I’m glad to see the progress has been made to make the Viewpoints Report capture the Results visual settings.  Hopefully we’ll see some more improvement to also capture the Redline information.