Topic: Who here uses Navisworks?

[JCTER]

Wow!  That sounds awesome!  I did not know I could even open/view Navisworks models on the iPad at all.  I will definitely look for that!  I just took a look at the apps offered by Autodesk as the author, and that was it.

I'll look into that NWNAVIGATOR as well one day.

[dgorsman]

A word of warning on the NwNavigator thing, it runs in a palette-like window inside AutoCAD.  It doesn't have all the functions of the full version and we've discontinued its use here because of crashing issues.  With a computer thats capable of running AutoCAD, running Simulate alongside it isn't a big deal.

[dgorsman]

If you get network licenses, and both a Simulate *and* Manage, watch out for cascading licenses.  If all the Simulate licenses are checked out and another person starts Simulate it will pull the Manage license without any kind of warning.  *Really* bloody annoying, especially since our parent company took over licensing and put them on a server in another city.

A lot of our clients are sending our Freedom NWD files to the field, one of the bigger clients is using Simulate in their module fab shop.  Its an excellent investment.

You can control it in the license manager by setting up groups and only giving certain groups access to Manage.

Provided, of course, we actually managed the license server and controlled the options file.  Even then, when licenses are tight one of those Manage users could still be pulling the Manage license for a Simulate session.  The upkeep of the user group names is problematic under these circumstances as well.  There should be an option to turn off cascade licensing, period.

[JCTER]

A word of warning on the NwNavigator thing, it runs in a palette-like window inside AutoCAD.  It doesn't have all the functions of the full version and we've discontinued its use here because of crashing issues.  With a computer thats capable of running AutoCAD, running Simulate alongside it isn't a big deal.

I was hesitant to try such a process within the Acad.exe process as it can already chug away on some resources when I'm in a biggish model.  I'll see what happens, until I get Simulate.

[barc]

A word of warning on the NwNavigator thing, it runs in a palette-like window inside AutoCAD.  It doesn't have all the functions of the full version and we've discontinued its use here because of crashing issues.  With a computer thats capable of running AutoCAD, running Simulate alongside it isn't a big deal.

we haven't had any issues with NWNAVIGATOR and it doesn't eat a license, but our basic cad machines have 8 or 12 Gb ram

[JCTER]

A word of warning on the NwNavigator thing, it runs in a palette-like window inside AutoCAD.  It doesn't have all the functions of the full version and we've discontinued its use here because of crashing issues.  With a computer thats capable of running AutoCAD, running Simulate alongside it isn't a big deal.

we haven't had any issues with NWNAVIGATOR and it doesn't eat a license, but our basic cad machines have 8 or 12 Gb ram

s'what I was afraid of.  I got the beast machine in the company on my desk and it's just 6GB with a 2.8ghz quad core

[barc]

A word of warning on the NwNavigator thing, it runs in a palette-like window inside AutoCAD.  It doesn't have all the functions of the full version and we've discontinued its use here because of crashing issues.  With a computer thats capable of running AutoCAD, running Simulate alongside it isn't a big deal.

we haven't had any issues with NWNAVIGATOR and it doesn't eat a license, but our basic cad machines have 8 or 12 Gb ram

s'what I was afraid of.  I got the beast machine in the company on my desk and it's just 6GB with a 2.8ghz quad core

Oh, sorry .. but still it shouldn't bog it down too much unless you're pushing a very large model through it.  We regularly use it on 8-15Mb AutoCAD files that then have another 10-30Mb of reference files and we see very little reduction in performance.

[barc]

If you get network licenses, and both a Simulate *and* Manage, watch out for cascading licenses.  If all the Simulate licenses are checked out and another person starts Simulate it will pull the Manage license without any kind of warning.  *Really* bloody annoying, especially since our parent company took over licensing and put them on a server in another city.

A lot of our clients are sending our Freedom NWD files to the field, one of the bigger clients is using Simulate in their module fab shop.  Its an excellent investment.

You can control it in the license manager by setting up groups and only giving certain groups access to Manage.

Provided, of course, we actually managed the license server and controlled the options file.  Even then, when licenses are tight one of those Manage users could still be pulling the Manage license for a Simulate session.  The upkeep of the user group names is problematic under these circumstances as well.  There should be an option to turn off cascade licensing, period.

Properly managed, licensing shouldn't be an issue.  It most offices the ability to access currently unused licenses is an advantage, you either have an application sitting idle or a paid employee.

[Helsinki_Dave]

..we're trialing Navisworks Manage from a city design perspective...exporting out from Autocad Architecture (with alot of property set data) and from 3dsMax (terrain). It's better than expected seems to have the ability to represent the data in Presenter>Rules in the same way ACA uses Visual Themes - so you can colour buildings according to their population, gross floor area, type of use etc based on data pulled in from the ACA objects. That's quite clever.

The rendering not a smudge on 3dsmax, things like mapping the bitmap to the terrain objects looks pig-ugly, there is no UVW-Mapping system per se ; you need to 'guess' where a bitmap starts, stops and what the rotation is. Also Navis doesn't pull in Vray materials from Max.

However the use Rules, as I said above, works ok and was an unexpected bonus.

We use tiny machines (6 years old running XP 32bit) but the model works fine on Navis...the same can't be said on ACA...it crashes the machine when all Constructs (or Xrefs if you like) are pulled in.

All round, ok experience so far.