AU 2018 - Go Vote NOW for your favorite classes

Busy, busy, busy, my life for the past 12 months.  Being full time on a project running 3D MEPFP coordination, an extremely fast paced project, really keeps a person away from things like a blog :)

But, something good will hopefully come out of it!  This is where you come in.  With the work I've been doing, I submitted a class to to present at Autodesk University 2018 this coming November (2018) in Las Vegas (USA). 

To vote for my class, click this link:
http://au.autodesk.com/speaker-resource-center/call-for-proposals/voting

When you get to the page, search for "baseball" (yes, baseball, you'll see why when you see my class details) and you will get directly to my class where you can vote to help get my class selected for AU 2018.

Thank you in advance!

Navisworks 2017 Crashing - Updating Clash Tests

Wow, it's been a looooooong time since I've actually posted!

We've been having an issue lately where Navisworks 2017 was crashing when some of our users were using the Update All for Clash Detection.  Tried multiple things, updating graphics card drivers, reinstalling, service packs, nothing worked.  Reached out to Autodesk and got a response that there are some Windows updates that is causing the issue.  Well, today, Autodesk released a KB article outlining what updates are causing the crashing behavior:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/navisworks-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Navisworks-crashes-when-trying-to-run-clash-in-all-models.html

The development team is continuing to investigate the cause and will update the above KB article if more Windows updates are causing the crashing to occur.  Hopefully, they come up with a Service Pack or Hotfix that will address the issue so we don't have to continuously check our Windows updates to make sure these listed updates don't get installed.

Turning the Page

Recently, I turned the page and started a new chapter in my work life.  I’ve moved on from being an Application Engineer for an Autodesk reseller in the Chicago area and am happy to announce that I am now the Technical Application Manager for a General Contractor in the Chicago area!

I’ll continue to keep this blog going, just may have a slightly different twist on some of the items I’ll be posting about. I’ll now be dealing with much more that just Autodesk products, so you may start to see some info coming across about how non-Autodesk products are being utilized in conjunction with Navisworks and the BIM 360 products.  You may even start to see posts about non-Autodesk products in general!

It’s definitely a different world being back in the AEC industry…should be a fun ride!

Shortest Distance comes to BIM 360 Glue

If you haven’t opened up BIM 360 Glue (desktop application) in a few weeks, an update was published and Glue now has a new Measure Tool….Shortest Distance!  This was one of the tools I couldn’t believe Glue didn’t have when I first started working with Glue and coming from using Navisworks.

A much welcomed addition!!

Latest Update to BIM 360 Glue–Clash Status and Markup

If I have a dollar for every time someone asked me if Glue had a status for it’s clashes I’d be writing this blog from a beach in Maui…ah, who am I kidding, I wouldn’t be writing this blog

Anyway, I won’t be (theoretically) collecting those dollars anymore! The latest update to BIM 360 Glue is the introduction of Clash Status.  You can now mark your clashes to be Open, Ignored or Closed and fixed clashes will now become Resolved instead of being removed.  As for Ignored & Closed status, here’s an explanation from the Help…

Clashes can be marked as "ignored" by the team members working on the merged model. Only admins can "close" clashes, providing a more formal level of control for the VDC/BIM manager. Clash status can be changed back to "open" if needed. Glue recognizes if a clash from a previous version has been fixed. If the clash no longer exists, it will be automatically marked as "resolved."

Another update is the ability to add a Markup directly to the Clash.  In the past, you could kind-of do this, but it was held as a Markup outside of the Clashes. Now you can just select a clash and add a Markup to it.  The nice thing about the Markup in Clash is that it also adds a Markup to the Markup “tool”, so even Clash Markups can be viewed with the iPad app!

Note though, if you use the Filtering/Grouping, you can’t add a Markup to the Group, you have to pick individual clashes to add a Markup.

Oh, one more thing….these updates are available to ALL projects, new or old.  Old projects (old meaning before July 11, 2014 basically) will prompt you for an update when you go into your Clash Test.  It does a “one time update” and then you have the new functionality!