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Creating Navisworks Template File

If you work with Navisworks, then you probably have noticed that it does not provide a built-in mechanism to create template files like AutoCAD or Revit. What can be done though is creating an empty .NWF file with dummy or empty linked files that can be replaced later. 

1. Start a new Navisworks file and save the .NWF according to your naming conventions.
2. Append dummy or blank files into the project that following your naming conventions. These dummy files should be stored in a folder structure with the .NWF file.
3. Create your search sets, clash sets, etc.
4. Save the template.

When you start a new project, copy the entire folder structure of the template to the project location. Replace the dummy files with the actual project files. If by chance the dummy file and the actual project files names are different but are the same discipline or organization structure, this can be corrected easily. When you open the .NWF, you should receive a message "Can't resolve external reference," which will allow you to browse to the new file you updated.  This new file can have a different file name or reside in a different location.  After you resave the NWF file, it will then link to this updated file. All your search sets, clash sets, etc will update accordingly.

Autodesk A360 Collaboration for Revit Setting Up A Project

Autodesk A360 Collaboration for Revit Demo

Autodesk Revit Model Review - Checking Sheet Names

Autodesk Revit Model Review is a very powerful tool for checking the contents of your model. A friend asked me how he could use Revit Model Review to check the naming of Sheets in project files. This is fairly easy.

The first step is to define a new check in Model Review. For this particular check, we are going to check the Parameter Requirements which is part of the Standards checks (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - Creating New Check

The next step is to define the "details" of the check. For this rule, we are going to check the Revit parameter sheet name to make sure that the aheet name starts with "ARC-". The easiest method to begin to define the details is to click on the Pick Element And Choose Parameter button. This will allow you to select a model element. For this example, we will select the titleblock.

Figure 2 -

When you select the titleblock, the Element Property List dialog (Figure 3) will open. Scroll thru the list to find the parameter that you want to check. In this example, we are checking the Sheet_Name parameter. Select the parameter and then click the Select button to close the dialog.

Figure 3 - Element Property List Dialog

Using the Pick Element allowed automatically selected the specific Element Type(s) and the specific parameter. For this example, we want to check the Sheets in the project to determine if they start with the prefix "ARC-". To do that we need to check the parameter text value. Figure 4 contains the values that must be set:
     Must Exist
     Must Match
     Regular Expression

Under "Please specify one of more Regex:" we need to add the expression ARC-.*. "ARC-" is the text that we want to check. The ".*" is a starts with / ends with expression. This is a common task/check that you will use in Model Review.

Figure 4 - Expression Setup

The last item that we need to setup for this task is filtering which model elements Model Review will check. Since we are checking the titleblock sheet name parameter, we should limit the search to just just titleblocks allowing the check to run faster.

Click on the Filter tab. In the dropdown under filter control, select Catergory. In the category selection, click on Title Blocks and then click the Add button to all the filter.

Figure 5 - Filter

The last step is to save the check and run it against the project. Note that one of the the sheets contains the prefix and one does not and the Model Review check is reporting correctly.

Figure 6 -Check Results

Download check file with this link.

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