Export bill of material?

[8wr_zj]

Let me start off by saying that i am not a navisworks user.  I am an Inventor user but recently was given the task of looking at better ways to bid and find cost savings with clients while presenting models/modular concepts.  Navisworks manage was suggested and i am currently looking into this.  I have a .NWD file that i ahave recieved from a customer that i need to come up with a bid on.  Is there a way to export a BOM and find out how many feet of piping may be in a certain design concept?  Also doing the same thing with structural steel?  This may be an easy question I am just looking for a little help.

Thanks in advance

[dgorsman]

There are some quantification tools in Simulate and Manage, but they are limited to certain source applications.

I'm not a big fan of BOM generation from Navisworks models since NWDs can easily be out of date or no longer valid, required source models might not be present, Navisworks users may not be familiar enough with the project to know what they should and shouldn't be counting, not all models may be intelligent enough, and so on.  If you do start using the quantification tools in Navisworks, I would *strongly* suggest you review potential problems and develop work procedures to minimize them.

[Brandon.Warren]

Lets say we wanted to go for it in Navisworks.  Can you please show us the way?