Category: Navisworks

The SDK of  Navisworks 2022 has been posted on  ADNOpen: https://www.autodesk.com/developer-network/platform-technologies/navisworks The contents are mostly same to the previous releases, while ActiveX redistributable dll is deprecated. The following two are no longer included in the SDK: activex_redistributable_x64.msm  Navisworks ActiveX Redistributable x64 Setup.exe These are based on an old technology. As an alternative solution, we encourage…

By Xiaodong Liang As usual, SDK of Navisworks 2021 has been posted on ADNOpen:https://www.autodesk.com/developer-network/platform-technologies/navisworks This SDK still keeps the similar contents like previous releases: materials of NET API, NWCreate API and COM API. Each of these materials includes samples and API documents: A few notes: Navisworks 2021 is built against .NET Framework 4.7, which means…

By Xiaodong Liang There is a parameter roll in UI [Edit Current Viewpoint]. It means rotating the camera around its front-to-back axis. A positive value rotates the camera counterclockwise, and a negative value rotates it clockwise. In API perspective, a rotation around world axes (WCS) is configured by Viewpoint.Rotation (Rotation3D) which is in 3D space…

By Xiaodong Liang It has been known by how to Get primitive from solid of Navisworks. Because there is not native NET API, we will need to take advantage of COM Interop. While COM Interop means managed-native transitions, which will cause lot of the slowness when the model is huge. So geometry extraction should be faster if…

By Xiaodong Liang This is an update on Persistent item ID of Navisworks objects: What IDs are available depend on the file format you’re loading into Navisworks. Some file formats don’t have any per objects ids, some have ids but they aren’t stable (edit the file in some unrelated way and the ids change). Most of…

By Xiaodong Liang Navisworks product can export whole model to FBX.  There is not a direct way to export some model items only. However, it can be workaround by hiding unnecessary items, and exporting. Then, only those visible items will be exported. The snapshot below is after the FBX is translated by the services of…

By Xiaodong Liang We are often asked about how to connect external database with the model items properties of Navisworks, like DataTools. Actually, since Navisworks .NET API is based on the native .NET framework, you can simply read out the data from database by relevant libraries such as Access, SQL, Oracle etc, then use properties…

By Xiaodong Liang As we have known, Naivisworks Ribbon API allows developers to add custom Ribbon (Tab) . These are some articles: http://adndevblog.typepad.com/aec/2012/07/custom-ribbon-of-navisworks-part-1.html http://adndevblog.typepad.com/aec/2012/07/custom-ribbon-of-navisworks-part-2.html http://adndevblog.typepad.com/aec/2012/07/custom-ribbon-of-navisworks-part-3.html While sometimes, the requirement is to add button/panel to the built-in tabs. Actually, in  Navisworks the same library of Ribbon is used: AdWindows.dll which provides some underlying API to get…

By Xiaodong Liang We have produced a training lab material. The first version covers 11 topics that we think are basic to the developers who are getting started with Navisworks API. It could be also a reference for those who have some practices because the contents and samples might include the tricks of API. The…