Discover how to effectively use the Units in Transform tool in Navisworks to correct model scale and positioning issues. This article specifically addresses correcting such issues in the Bath City model, initially focusing on the issues with appended models, Center 15 and 16.
Key Insights
- The Units in Transform tool allows you to set the drawing unit for each model, ensuring that all models are scaled correctly. This was demonstrated by adjusting the Center 15 model's drawing unit from inches to millimeters.
- With the Units in Transform tool, you can also adjust the origin of each model. This function was crucial in repositioning the misplaced Center 16 model by manually entering a new origin in the X, Y, and Z dimensions.
- Apart from the Units in Transform tool, Navisworks also offers other transform tools for correcting model positioning and scale. These will be explored in subsequent content.
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Welcome back to Navisworks. In this video, we'll be covering the Units and Transform tool, and we'll be revisiting the Bath City model that we started to append together. So let's go ahead and find that model, select the Open button, and in the Bath City folder under Lesson 1, we saved it as bath_city.nwf. Now last time we were in this model, if you recall, we had some problems with a couple of the appended models, Center15 and Center16. One was in the incorrect place, and one was too big.
So in this video, we'll be correcting those issues using the Units and Transform tool. So first, we actually unloaded those models. I'm going to open up my Selection Tree.
If you don't have yours open, then in the Home tab under the Select and Search panel, select the Selection Tree button and make it blue, and you'll see your panel pop out. We're going to re-append those Center15 and Center16 models, Center15.dwg and Center16.dwg, and if we hit the corner of the ViewCube we'll see—oh yes—Center15 is the one that's having all the issues. You can tell it's Center15 because if I select any object within this model, my Selection Tree will show that the object is under Center15.
Now we have something to investigate. So first of all, let's select the Center15.dwg model in the Selection Tree, right-click, and then go to Units and Transform. So every model has its own drawing unit and its own origin, and the instructions for which drawing units to use are typically saved within the files.
Sometimes they get saved incorrectly or they're used differently from one file to another. So what we're investigating here is to make sure that our model units are set the same between all of the other models. So right now, the Units and Transform tell us that the model units—or the drawing units—for Center15 are set to inches.
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Cool, that sounds okay. Let's hit Cancel, and let's check any one of the other models and see if that corresponds. And in fact, it does not match.
The other models seem to be drawn as millimeters, so if Center14 and Center15 were drawn at the same scale, then one would be much larger because one unit equals one inch rather than one millimeter. So no worries, all we have to do is set the drawing unit for Center15 to millimeters, and then they will correspond. Once I select that, I will see that Center15 is the correct size and is consistent with all of the other models.
So drawing units are one thing that you can change in the Units and Transform dialog box. The other unusual thing about this model is that we have one piece of our city floating above the rest of the model. So let's investigate this situation.
It is Center16, as the blue selection tells me. Right-click on Center16, select Units and Transform, and I'll see that my model units are correctly set to millimeters. My origin is 0,0, 0, and my rotation seems to be okay, and my scale is 1,1, 1. So because the Units and Transform settings seem to be all correct for this model, we can just hit OK, and we can use a different type of transform by assuming that the origin is incorrect, and we can use the Measure tool to actually make this transformation.
So what we need to do is find two known points, and I'm seeing that this is actually a puzzle-like piece that seems to be just in the wrong position. But I can see that this corresponds with another piece that's much lower than it. It could be a grid line, it could be a level marker. Usually, models have indicators of where they should be.
Go to the Review tab, and under the Measure Split button, select Point to Point, and you can just move close to one vertex here, and then to the corresponding vertex there, and we can tell Navisworks to move this part from here to there by selecting Center16, and then in the Measure panel, selecting the flyout, and choosing Transform Selected Items. I'm going to hit Escape to deselect Center16, and now our model is nicely in place where it should be. If we investigate the Units and Transform, we'll see that the origin has changed to X, Y, and Z to negative 3 7/8 inches.
If we actually knew this dimension from the start, we could simply type it in. So I'm going to undo that transform by going back through previous views.
There we go. And if we in fact know that it's off by 3 7/8 inches, I can right-click on Center16 and then type that in here. So in Z, input negative 0 feet, 3 inches, 7/8, and it looks like the reason why there's a small gap here is simply because we're rounding to the nearest 1/8 inch.
We can simply use Measure to fix that issue, and now it looks like this model is locked in place. And that concludes the basics of the Units and Transform tool. There are other transform tools in Navisworks, and we'll be getting into those.
This one is mostly used as a correction to the position or scale of a model that you placed. So thank you for watching, and I will see you in the next video.