Navisworks Export VS Fabrication Pipe Insulation

[L-Vettz]

Copied post from the Navisworks forums that I was told to copy here by Autodesk support staff.

Does anybody have any solutions/suggestions for how to deal with fabrication insulation when exporting to Navisworks for clash detection?

As it stands when I export all the insulation is placed in its own category with no association to the pipe it is attached to or any levels. This hits me twofold. First it makes color coding the insulation with the appearance profiler impossible. The insulation does not contain any of the parameters the fabrication pipe does. I cant use the profiler to hunt for service names or abbreviations, so all insulation is treated the same. We've had to resort to giving all insulation a 50% transparency so that we can still see the insulation as well as the color of the pipe within. This is ok, but really not ideal when other trades still using CAD can pull the layer color for their insulation. (still waiting for the day we can do the same with our revit filter colors).

The second issue is how the insulation is not grouped by layer. I love the revit export setting to export the entire project and automatically have the .nwc file broken up into levels. It makes clash detection grouping very easy... unless it has fabrication insulation. The insulation is not assigned a level, so it cant be grouped by level and I have to create .nwc files for each floor of my project in order to group for clash detection. This is the real time killer of the two. (see snip)

Does anybody use any workarounds for these issues or do you think we can ever expect more parameters to be available out of revit when exporting to navis?

I'm going from Revit 2018 > Navisworks. AutoCAD is never opened, Revit is just reading the fabrication parts databases used in FabricationCAD, ESTMEP, etc.

In Revit the insulation is bound to the pipe, its not a selectable element, it is part of the pipe. When you select the pipe you also get the insulation. So I don't understand why when exporting into Navisworks the two are separated completely and the insulation loses all the parameters that would be used with appearance profilers to color pipes.

For now I've gotten around it with some dynamo scripts in that re-write fabrication parameters to custom shared parameters on the pipe. Those shared parameters stick to the insulation after exporting to Navis and I can filter them. It's working but its cumbersome and involves using dynamo which not everybody knows how to use.

[#2]

Does anybody have any solutions/suggestions for how to deal with fabrication insulation when exporting to Navisworks for clash detection?

As it stands when I export all the insulation is placed in its own category with no association to the pipe it is attached to or any levels. This hits me twofold. First it makes color coding the insulation with the appearance profiler impossible. The insulation does not contain any of the parameters the fabrication pipe does. I cant use the profiler to hunt for service names or abbreviations, so all insulation is treated the same. We've had to resort to giving all insulation a 50% transparency so that we can still see the insulation as well as the color of the pipe within. This is ok, but really not ideal when other trades still using CAD can pull the layer color for their insulation. (still waiting for the day we can do the same with our revit filter colors).

The second issue is how the insulation is not grouped by layer. I love the revit export setting to export the entire project and automatically have the .nwc file broken up into levels. It makes clash detection grouping very easy... unless it has fabrication insulation. The insulation is not assigned a level, so it cant be grouped by level and I have to create .nwc files for each floor of my project in order to group for clash detection. This is the real time killer of the two. (see snip)

Does anybody use any workarounds for these issues or do you think we can ever expect more parameters to be available out of revit when exporting to navis?

I'm going from Revit 2018 > Navisworks. AutoCAD is never opened, Revit is just reading the fabrication parts databases used in FabricationCAD, ESTMEP, etc.

In Revit the insulation is bound to the pipe, its not a selectable element, it is part of the pipe. When you select the pipe you also get the insulation. So I don't understand why when exporting into Navisworks the two are separated completely and the insulation loses all the parameters that would be used with appearance profilers to color pipes.

For now I've gotten around it with some dynamo scripts in that re-write fabrication parameters to custom shared parameters on the pipe. Those shared parameters stick to the insulation after exporting to Navis and I can filter them. It's working but its cumbersome and involves using dynamo which not everybody knows how to use.

[#3]

I'm going from Revit 2018 > Navisworks. AutoCAD is never opened, Revit is just reading the fabrication parts databases used in FabricationCAD, ESTMEP, etc.

In Revit the insulation is bound to the pipe, its not a selectable element, it is part of the pipe. When you select the pipe you also get the insulation. So I don't understand why when exporting into Navisworks the two are separated completely and the insulation loses all the parameters that would be used with appearance profilers to color pipes.

For now I've gotten around it with some dynamo scripts in that re-write fabrication parameters to custom shared parameters on the pipe. Those shared parameters stick to the insulation after exporting to Navis and I can filter them. It's working but its cumbersome and involves using dynamo which not everybody knows how to use.

[L-Vettz]

original post here.