Autodesk Navisworks

[#1]

Hello, I am having trouble opening a MicroStation DGN file with NavisWorks. The problem is that complex solids are not brought into NavisWorks. They are simply omited when I open the DGN file. I know that elements are omitted because I can go to View > Scene Statistics and it tells me that there are failed smartsolids and cells. I get a description as shown below. I usually locate the offending elements and drop them to surfaces, and that seems to fix the problem. It is a real pain to try and located those elements. It's a trial and error process to look for elements that are complex and guess that they are the elements that fail. My question is how can I locate the omitted elements easily? I might expect NavisWorks to create a log file showing the location or element ID's of the failed elements, but I cannot find any such file. Any recommendations? Thanks.


SCENE STATISTICS
Triangles, Lines and Points: 2658403
Bounding Box: (8238.87,19976.8,-58.75),(9923.76,21355.6,38)
2008-052 Str Foundations.dgn
2008-052 Str Foundations.dgn
Converted 3928 Cell
Converted 779 Line
Converted 2 Shape
Converted 2546 Complex Shape
Converted 67 Ellipse
Converted 2076 Surface
Converted 5128 Solid
Converted 866 Cone
Converted 23 B-Spline Surface
Converted 3660 SmartSolid
Failed 163 Cell
Failed 163 SmartSolid

[#2]

If you have access to Microstation, the best way of bringing DGN files into Navisworks is to export from Microstation as an NWC using the Microstation export plugin. The Microstation export plugin has access to the Microstation API and is able to handle complex elements that the reader has trouble with.

You can do a DGN to NWC conversion using Microstation via the command line, so the process can be automated. Navisworks comes with a sample perl script for converting a whole directory of DGNs.

There is no additional logging for the DGN reader that will show the location or element IDs of failed elements.

[#3]

That worked. Thanks! For others benefit, here is what I did. I opened MicroStation and loaded the NavisWorks export plugin using the keyin "mdl load nwexport6". Then keyin "nwdout" or "nwcout". You will then export the NavisWorks file from within MicroStation.