By Garry Stockton
On a recent demo I came across some content which was quite away from the primary model. I'd like you all to try something similar and how I overcame them. Open a large Navisworks project you are working on, if you press 'Page Up' to zoom out to the entire model, and you can no longer see the model, or it looks tiny then you should audit it for very distant items.
This is something we recommend you do as a simple check whenever creating an NWD, large or small, but there are symptoms of models which desperately need this. I've listed a few below: -
- When you render your model through Presenter, only the background shows, or you seem to get holes or triangles missing from a render.
- When you navigate the model, it looks like you have a section plane in front of you.
- Jerky performance when navigating.
- Model disappears when rotating around the model.
- When you zoom out the model disappears.
- Two faces seem to occupy the same space giving a jagged looking surface.
When focused in on the model select an item (not the whole model) and save this as a Selection Set. You will use this in a minute to identify the location of the model in the view or return to the model at any time.
Press Page Up to Zoom out to the extents of the model. If the model is not zoomed out then the distant objects may be behind the model, rotate the model 90° and press Page Up again to Zoom back out.
Go to the Item Tools toolbar.
Select the Move tool, a gizmo should now appear where the model is in the viewpoint.
Use the Selection Box tool to select the areas away from the gizmo and the model. In the image below I made four selection boxes, in the third selection box I found a single item, with the move tool still selected the gizmo shows where this item is. When items are selected, either follow the steps below for each item, or add them to a new selection set(s) for further investigation.
Use Page Down to Zoom in to the selected items.
There is a quicker route to do this by using the selection box to select the main model then inverting the selection, however this may miss multiple instances of the same item and will not give you as much control when looking for the distant items.
Once you have identified any very distant items there are several possible routes to improve the model quality:
- The easiest method is simply to Hide those items, once they are hidden then the bounding box of the model will be vastly reduced, improving the symptoms listed above, the items however will still be in the model.
- If this is a whole CAD file in a distant location, you may need to apply a transform to place it correctly in the model or change the origin or coordinates in the CAD file, so it comes into the correct location.
- Go back to the native CAD model, use the properties to identify the object:
a. If it is distant from the model or at the origin coordinates in the CAD package, then it should be placed correctly or deleted dependent on your model and practices. Save the model and refresh the Navisworks scene.
b. If it is correctly placed in the model then you need to look more closely into why this part of the model has been translated incorrectly, check the options for reading the file in or look at alternate routes to bring the model into Navisworks. If you cannot find an obvious problem, log a support case with the model data and details of the very distant item with Cadline, we may also be able to use this to improve Navisworks file handling. - Check if the object has any transformation overrides placing it in the wrong place with Right Click > Reset Item > Reset Transforms.
This should do the trick.