By Garry Stockton
The main benefit of using search sets is the reduction in time to find certain items based on different criteria. Navisworks enables you to create a group of objects based on criteria that can be defined by the user in various ways.
If Selection sets are created, they are a static group of items and are useful for saving a group of objects that could be repeatedly selected that you may want to regularly perform some action on, such as hiding them, changing colour or transparency. They simply store a group of items for later use. There is no intelligence behind this set – if the model changes at all, the same items are selected (assuming they are still available in the model) when recalling the selection set.
Search sets however are dynamic groups of items similar to selection sets, that save search criteria instead of the results of a selection. The search can be re-run at any point as and when the model changes. Search sets are much more powerful and can save you time, especially if your CAD/Revit files are continuing to be updated and revised. It is also possible to export search sets and share them with other users.
You can select objects using the Select Tool (A), highlight objects from the Selection Tree (B) by dragging and dropping them into the selection sets dialog box, or Find Items tool (C).
Rather than re-create Selection Sets repeatedly, standard sets can be created by exporting the sets to a .XML file, which in turn could then be imported into any appended Navisworks file sets.