Navisworks API for Active X Plugin

[johnyan29]

Hi does anyone know if the ActiveX Plugin itself have an API or is the API only for the Navisworks Application itself?

thanks,

John

[xiaodong_liang]

Hi,

Sorry, could you elaborate the question?

ActiveX plugin is also a type of plugin. It can only be used in the host (Naivisworks). The API of an ActiveX plugin uses the API of COM, like what ActiveX control or Automation uses. i.e. Navisworks provides COM API. ActiveX plugin is just one way to access the API. But it can only be used within Navisworks, instead of any other hosts (EXE).

[johnyan29]

Thanks for the reply Xiao Dong.

I actually have a new issue.  It seems that when we open an NWD file through the Navisworks ActiveX, more data is downloaded than just the file itself.

We did a test where for example, we try to open up a 1MB file through the browser using the ActiveX plugin but it actually dowloads about 10MBs worth of data.

Do you know what can be causing this?  Please let me know.

thanks,

John

[xiaodong_liang]

Hi,

I seemed not to have seen such behavior. Can you see this with any model such as the samples provided by Manage/Simulate?

But probably the comments of our engineer would help a bit for your to know something about the machanism in the background:

Theoretically when opening a URL, it’s the same in both the ActiveX control and the main products. An initial proportion of the file  is downloaded up front (this contains the layout and more…). After that  model opens and geometry is streamed down in a prioritised way as required, any downloaded data is cached to disk. The size of the initial download is model specific. We know what size the file is, so we make a temp file the same size. Most of it is empty when you first open the model. We pull down data as required and populate it.