By Andy Davis
Autodesk Navisworks
Every member of your design team has a copy of Navisworks Simulate, but your team only has a single user Navisworks Manage license. How can your team members run their own clash tests and then view the results without exclusive use of Navisworks Manage?
Clash Detective
After running a clash test in Navisworks Manage, the Clash Detective allows you to save the results as Viewpoints with the result highlighting preserved as it was in the Results window.
A folder is created in the Saved Viewpoints window with the same name as the clash test. Each clash is saved as a viewpoint within the folder.
When a clash viewpoint is selected, the view of the clash is displayed exactly as it was shown in the Clash Detective – complete with any markup that may have been added. All of the properties that were included in the clash test report are included in the comment associated with the clash and can be viewed in the Comments window.
Published Navisworks Model
By publishing the model to an NWD file complete with clash test viewpoints, Navisworks users can use Navisworks Simulate or Freedom to view the results.
When opened with any version of Navisworks, the clash test viewpoints are displayed when they are selected.
If the NWD file is opened in Navisworks Simulate, the SwitchBack function may be used to locate the clashing items directly within the authoring CAD application.
In Summary
To summarise, the workflow is as follows:
- Run Navisworks Manage to run a clash test
- Report clash results as Viewpoints
- Publish the model to an NWD file
- Open the NWD file with Navisworks Simulate
- Select the clash viewpoints in turn
- Use Switchback to locate the clashing items in the authoring CAD application.