Autodesk Navisworks

[#1]

I have an NWF file with many NWDs referenced in it. It's been working fine for months now; but now when I try to open it it stops at 45%. The other strange thing is that at 45% it shows it trying to load itself. E.g. if my file is ABC.nwf, at 45% it shows it trying to load ABC.nwf and stops progressing.

I copied the file to my desktop (from the network share) and it now gets to 90% (processing), but it still seems to lock up and not open the file.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[#2]

I think the loading of the NWF file appearing in the loader bar may be a red herring. that is part of the file load process where we list the individual files we are loading as part of the part NWF file, followed by the loading of NWF Navisworks specific data (viewpoints, clash data etc), then optimisation of the geometry.

I'd check your memory usage at the time of loading, in the Task Manager > Performance, if this is maximised you may just be running out of memory. How many files are loading, how big are the files in total? Can all the NWD's be loaded on their own (i.e. without the parent NWF)?

In Options > Model > Performance do you have Close NWC/NWD on load switched on. If so try switching it off, this will stream the parts of the model you need from the location rather than try and load the entire model to memory. From what you describe with the improvement in performance locally then there may be some network performance issues which need to be addressed that would be out of our control, but you should still be able to open the file locally.

Was this a sudden change in loading the file or had you noticed a gradual degradation?

Have you tried this on any other machines? What results did you get?

When you load the file locally, you say it locks up, what locks up, the entire machine, or just Navisworks? Does it lock up with the Loading bar still displaying?

Can you upload a screenshot of the System Info under Help in Navisworks?

[#3]

Thank you for your response.

We have found a workaround (and possibly solution) to the problem, but I will get to that after I answer each of your questions.

I highly doubt that memory or processing power is an issue. The machines we are using have 24GB of DDR3 ram and an Intel Xeon 6 core (@ 3ghz) processor. Here is the navisworks info snapshot:

At first, the "close nwc/nwd" option  was not selected, but we then tried this hoping it would help performance. It did not seem to make a difference.

The result was the same across 2 different machines. And Just navisworks lock up. The loading bar is still displaying when it locks up.

I don't have all the details since the main person who was working with this is out today. But we think we found the problem:

We had NWDs linked in to the NWF that were snapshots of some drawings. We got new drawings, so we created new NWDs. I think we either moved or renamed the original NWDs and then referenced in the new NWDs. This is when Navisworks started "misbehaving".

We guessed that it was probably looking for the files that had moved or been renamed, so we moved them back to where they were originally, and then Navisworks loaded up fine. We removed the references to these NWDs, saved the model, and then moved/renamed the NWDs to an archive folder. The NWF opens fine now.

If the issue is that navisworks gets stuck in a loop looking for those files, then it really needs to be fixed. There may be a scenario where someone is not able to reproduce the original files that Navisworks is looking for and will need to regenerate a new NWF (thus losing all their clashes / viewports).

There really should be a feature in Navisworks to clean up NWFs outside of Navisworks, or a "partial load" like AutoCAD has in order to prevent issues like this from making an NWF unusable.

[#4]

UPDATE: I was running into this same problem - I would hit the 45% mark and it would seem to "freeze" or "lock" up.

it was also after I was "overwritten" a bunch of .dwg files that wer directly linked into my NWF.

...Long story short, it took about an hour and half, but Navisworks FINALLY opened my NWF!! I thought it was freezing, apparently was just thinking... and thinking... and thinking.

Just wanted to update this as it is not a "probem" per se, but you would think that taking over an hour to open the file (it IS a large NWF, my CPU is pretty good too - i7, 8GB ram)

[#5]

I am currently experiencing this problem.  I have it loading to 91% "Working ..." but it's just stopped there.

I have an NWF file with nwc, dwgs, and revit files appended.  Computer performance isn't the issue.  

I've let it load for about an hour now and am still hoping it just pops up.  But this is something that should be addressed by AutoDesk.  

[#6]

Apparently waiting 2 hours did the trick.

Opens normally now.

[#7]

I have experianced slow opening of NWF files here on a few PC's changing the DWG loader to 2012 solved the problem.

Simulate 2013