Navisworks Freedom 2022 Opens File With Blank Screen

[Bill Tillman]

I have an rvt model that was created by a very professional architect firm which I opened using Revit 2021 and exported it to a DWFX file which Navisworks can open.  But alas, most of it was contracted out so the people I'm speaking with at the architect's office are not up to speed. Oh well, such is life in the BIM world.

 

This morning we did an on-line meeting where they shared their screens with me. They use the same version of Naviswork Freedom as I'm using and the same model file. But when she first opened it up, the building was right there on the screen at a scale which can be easily seen. So I open up the DWXF file and the screen is blank. I can mess round with the mouse wheel and eventfully get something to zoom in but this takes time and the view is easily lost and it reverts back to the zoomed out view I started with. Plus mostly what I see is just green lines. Eventually I zoom in close enough to the right area that the building appears and I can begin working with it. I'm thinking there are two problems here. The first being there is some method of get the file to open with the building model already zoomed in but so far the other parties cannot tell me how they do that. The second issue is that the display driver on this computer is not powerful enough to work with these models. I should add a 3rd issue and that is I still have a big learning curve to get really efficiently work with revit models.

 

 

Edited October 26, 2021 by Bill Tillman

[Bill Tillman]

Okay, after a few more hours of crash course in self-teaching myself Revit & Navisworks I've arrived at the following conclusion. Most of the people using Revit & Navisworks only know enough to be dangerous in the use of the software. I found that there are many settings, especially in the Visibility/Graphics tab that many settings can either help or hinder the learning curve. Trouble is the people who distribute these rvt and nwd files to me have no clue that certain objects are not showing or are showing up because someone clicked something in these windows. In fact they don't even know that anything is missing. And these are the people being called BIM consultants. Some of them are very good, but the majority of people I've asked for assistance on using their files are just not trained well enough to do much but view and print with this very expensive software. Way back in 1998 I remember attending a meeting with Microsoft's sales people on the upcoming Active Directory service and how they felt most users will not properly setup the structure of the network. I think AutoDesk probably has the same opinion.

 

BTW, in the above post, I did find a way to get rid of objects in the file which was miles away from the site plans. So when we performed a ZA or ZE it took extra steps to find the structural stuff.