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.

Updating the Navisworks NWC Exporters

With (practically) each and every Service Pack/Update that Autodesk puts out for Navisworks, there is a corresponding update for the NWC Exporters…

How many of you actually download and install the update for the NWC Exporters?

Well, if you don’t, you should be.  I ran across an issue the other day where a customer was exporting a Revit 2014 model to NWC (2014) and many of the walls weren’t showing up when opening/appending the NWC file in Navisworks, even though the walls were visible in the Revit view. I got the file and tried it myself, worked perfectly. I knew the customer had SP1 for Navisworks 2014 installed, so I asked if they had also updated the Exporters…nope. Once they installed the update for the Exporters, all was good.

It’s very easy to miss, or should I say look over, when you go grab an update for Navisworks. But the next time Autodesk rolls out an update for Navisworks, make sure you also install the update for the Exporters (if it’s available).

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!

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.

Autodesk Acquires Vela Systems

This should be interesting to see where Autodesk takes this.  Vela already has Navisworks files working on the mobile devices and I’m hoping this means even more integration in the future!

Press release can be read HERE