Navisworks 2012 - Walkthrough 'path'?

[plawton5092]

Anyone:

Does Navisworks have the ability to draw a walthrough path, like 3DS-Max, or even Revit?  I like everything else about the program, but the herky-jerky motion control is terrible for making animations.

Thanks

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

No, NW does not have paths, hopefully some day.  What you need to do is to Go to your SAVED VIEWPOINTS Pallette, R/C, Create an Animation "folder".  Then create a series of Saved Viewpoints around the area you wish to see.  Then move the Saved Viewpoints to the "Animations Folder".  NW will do the smoothing transitions to the animation automatically, based on the VP's.  HINT:  the more VP's you save and create, the Smother the Animations.  It's a little tedious, but it works with a little practice.  Think of the VP's as Keyframes.

 I just create a Fly around for an Installation Sequencing project, and it worked well.  One thing I am going to change though........I'm going to invest in the 3D Mouse.  makes the movements to the VP's easier and on a more level plane from one to the next.

HTH.

Mike

[dembkod]

plawton5092 ,'

Great advice Mike. Building a series of viewpoints and stringing them together as a viewpoint animation is the way to go. Navisworks will automatically navigate the animation in the selected order and create a smooth motion between the shots.

You can think of these viewpoints as a series of stills connected by straight lines. The Navisworks camera rides through these lines to connect your viewpoints.

If you are interested in a different behavior, you can request this type of functionality directly from our Program Directors here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=1109794

They use this type of input to determine the future growth of the application.   

Thank you for participating in our community!

David Dembkoski

Product Support Specialist

Autodesk Product Support

[plawton5092]

Sir:

Thanks so much for the tip, I am trying out your technique now.

One more:  Is there a way to 'lock' the Focus?  I'm used to having the camera remain focused on one point, then flying the camera around that point (AutoCAD, MAX, etc.), but whenever I place the Focus in Navisworks, it only stays there until I start a new command.

Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

>>> One more:  Is there a way to 'lock' the Focus? 

You might be looking at the "classic turntable" command, haven't checked if it still works in 2012:

http://www.cadsoft-consult.com/blogs/architecture/2010/05/dont-take-away-my-turntable-navisworks-201...

This should focus the camera on one spot and rotate around it, if I remember correctly.

For the first question it is possible, even though it requires some API coding

>>>Does Navisworks have the ability to draw a walthrough path, like 3DS-Max, or even Revit?  I like everything else about the program, but the herky-jerky motion control is terrible for making animations.

I made a small C# software utilising the Navis API that lets the camera follow a pipeline in Navisworks keeing the camera focus or shifting it according to need, with some small modifications it should be possible to track a e.g. Autocad polyline or similar. It was made for project coordination but most likley it should be possible to use it for animation also. Sadly it is company property so I am not able to share the code, but there are quite many examples in the api folder that you can steal code from. Requires software development skills of course.

For a more teadius approach you could take the coordinates from a AutoCad line and recreate the viewpoints in xml for import into Navisworks, this approach is quite some manual work, but should be possible also, maybe it would just be better to create the viewports manually in Navisworks (but if the design comes from another application you could maybe save the coordinates from the base design?).

/Markus

[Anonymous]

I just wanted to know is there any feature to controll time between two viewports ! Because sometimes animation is going too fast while sometimes very slow. I have created multiple viewports in both the situations.

[Patrick_Aps_9121]

move the viewpoints in the timeline of the animation: the further away, the slower the movement from A to B