Autodesk Navisworks

[#1]

We have a composite that is made up of 2600 files that are all xref'd files.  A lot of those files have overlayed xref's inside of them that Navisworks loads as well. 

We don't want the xref's inside of the xref'd file to load.  This creates over 1 hour load times.  The only way around that is to detach the xref's inside the models to avoid navisworks double loading files. 

Detaching the xref's from the models cause a problem from a modelling aspect because someone has to remember which xref's were in that model and what directories they came from.

Is there a way navisworks can load xref's that are only in the composite and ignore the xref's inside the models that are xref'd in???

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks

[#2]

Hi there,

I don't think there is a direct way to do this in a single conversion run as it stands, as Navisworks will only check the option once and then convert all xrefs during loading of the primary DWG. The DWG reader also converts Xrefs via its own internal mechanisms (rather than, for example, a re-entrant call to itself) which means there is no place currently to intercept the conversion process on a per-file basis.

Your best bet at the moment is probably to make the unwanted Xrefs unavailable at conversion time to Navisworks, e.g. by copying the top-level DWGs only somewhere before reading them, or run a script that renames all the unwanted files by extension and then back to original DWG. As long as Navisworks cannot locate the xrefs that you don't want, it will prompt & allow you to ignore them.

It is also possible that you could script something in AutoCAD that hid the undesired Xrefs temporarily - I'm fairly certain that the loader will discard hidden items, though I am not sure on whether it would attempt to convert them first or not (and thus not actually solve your load time problem).

The only other route that comes to mind would be to use an NWF in Navisworks as your composite instead of a DWG, and then you could change the DWG conversion for the XRefed files to not convert their internal XRefs. That doubtless comes with its own set of issues.

One other alternative that isn't so much working around the load time as moving it is to run the conversion using File Tools and batch it up overnight, but that would depend on how often you need to reload changes.

Hope that helps,

Jeff

[#3]

A much simpler solution is to swithc the Navisworks Simulate (or Manage) option to load Xrefs OFF

and then create a conposite.nwf where you append the 1600 DWG's

Only backdraft is that whenever a new drawing has to be added to the composite, jou need to append it to the navisworks nwf also.