Navisworks freedom versus Navisworks

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to convince my boss we need the full version of Navisworks. Am I correct in saying that with Freedom all you can do is view the job and walk thru it. That you need Navisworks inorder to tell elevations, where things are located off walls, etc. In addition you can't view any of the coordination mark ups done for the job in Freedom. I'm just trying to get a basic grip on the differences to convince soemone who is not very computer savy that Navsiworks is the future of how projects are going to be coordinated and done. 

[dgorsman · Accepted solution]

As of Navisworks 2013 there are now measurement tools in Freedom so you can get distances and elevations.  Freedom has always had the ability to use the saved views/animations, along with associated comments and redlines, and view data associated with objects.

The primary reason for having Navisworks Simulate is to open model files from a wide variety of sources and publish them to NWD.  If somebody else is creating the NWDs for you and you don't need to create markups, save views, or make permanent changes to the NWD then you don't really *need* Simulate.  Having one or two network licenses can be handy though, since you can roll it out to everybody (but only one or two users at a time).  If you have upgraded to Suite-based products you may already have the ability to run Simulate.