Delve into the advanced navigation features of Navisworks and learn how to maximize the potential of your modeling work. Discover how to set a home view, utilize look around and walk tools, adjust camera focus and movement, and effectively navigate complex models with ease.
Key Insights
- The article highlights the importance of setting a home view in Navisworks models which helps users to easily return to a particular viewpoint at any time during their navigation.
- The tutorial introduces advanced tools like "look around" and "walk" which offer more immersive and realistic navigation as compared to basic tools. The "look around" tool allows 360-degree camera movement, while the "walk" tool enables users to virtually move through the model.
- Users are also guided on how to effectively use the focus tool and tilt feature, offering specific techniques for changing camera elevation, sidestepping, and maneuvering in complex models. A key tip is to use the home button to reset the view if one gets lost in the model.
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Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. In this video I'll be covering the advanced navigation tools and we will be using our metogate.nwd file. The first thing I'd like you to do is set a home view and the home view is actually part of the viewcube.
The way that we set that is to get into the position where we want to be, which is where we are right now, and there is a small down arrow on the right hand side of your viewcube. I want you to click on that and then select the menu item set current view as home. Essentially what this does is it just saves the position that our camera is right now.
If we were to move somewhere else and get lost potentially, then we can simply just hit the home button and get back to where we were. It's always useful to have a home view in any file that you're in. In the previous video I covered the basic navigation tools and I like to separate the advanced tools from the basic ones because the basic tools tend to treat the model as an object, as if you are moving an object in front of you around.
The advanced tools, like the lookaround and walk tools, tend to treat the camera as the object that you're moving around, almost as if you're a user in the space and you can move through the model. I find the advanced tools to be the most useful in Navisworks, but also the most difficult to learn. So make sure you give yourself enough time to practice with these before you get into the video series and have trouble moving around the growingly complex models.
The first one I'd like to look at is the look around tool, and that's the eyeball with the small arrows around. This tool works in a one-to-one motion. If I were to press my left mouse button and move my cursor left a little bit, then my camera will move left a little bit, and right it will do the same thing.
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I can look up and down and the camera focus will follow my cursor up and down. We can look all the way around in 360 degrees. You can drag the cursor off the screen and you'll see it reappear on the right hand side, but just note that your camera is still remaining in the same position.
I'm not getting any closer to this building or farther away, and I'm not moving up or down. My feet are planted on the ground. The look around's sister tool, look at, is much more automated.
If we were to select a plane, then our camera will move perpendicularly to that plane, and it will focus or center that one plane that we have selected. So for example, let's select the sign. You'll see that we are now looking at that sign perpendicularly, straight on, and we can, as our secondary tool, zoom in to whichever item, or that sign, the one that we had selected, and we can zoom out of that as well.
We hit the home button, we can go back home. The other tool in the look around series is focus, and focus is sort of an oddball tool. Essentially, when you use it, it will center your view to the plan that you're looking at, but it's not going to move you perpendicular to it, and it's also not going to keep your camera vertical.
I've never found it entirely useful, but there may be something that you guys find that you think that the focus tool is just tremendous for, but I tend to keep this tool at the look around, with the look around icon. All right, so now let's really get into it. Hit the home button, and we will use the walk tool, the famed Navisworks walk tool.
When you have the tool selected, you will see that your icon changes to two footprints, and this one does not work on a one-to-one motion of your cursor. It works basically by accelerating the camera in whichever direction you have selected. So here's how it works.
What you'd want to do is set the cursor at the center of your screen, hold down the left mouse button. You will find that it doesn't seem to do anything, but if you push your cursor forward slightly, you'll see that your camera starts to move forward, and the further away we get from that one point that we started, which was the center of the screen, the faster my camera is going to move forward. If you need to stop, just let go.
To move backwards, it's exactly the same motion, but the opposite. So I'm holding the left mouse button in the center of the screen, and I'm pulling down or back on the mouse, and I'm accelerating backwards, and then I let go to stop. To look to the right, we'll do the same motion, but move the cursor to the right.
I'm holding down the left mouse button, and see how I accelerate as I get farther away from this initial point that I started, and it will slow down as I get back toward that center position. Left works the same way, and you can also use the directions in conjunction with each other. So I can move forward, and I can pivot to the left at the same time.
So I'm moving forward, and now I'm pivoting to the right at the same time. And let's practice by getting close to the door in this area. So I'm moving forward, I am correcting my position by pivoting, and I am now kind of looking at the door.
I'm close to it, so I can't see the whole thing, but the secondary tool of the walk tool, which is operated by the mouse wheel, is the tilt tool. So I can tilt up by pulling back on the neck and looking up, and if you push forward on the mouse wheel, it's like you're craning your neck forward and looking down. You can change the elevation by holding down the center mouse button, and this looks a lot like the pan tool, but it works much differently.
If I were to push this cursor up, and I'm holding down the center mouse button, my elevation is changing. It's accelerating upwards, and of course down does the same thing but opposite. And then if I were to move to the left, I am actually sidestepping left and sidestepping right, not pivoting.
So with the combination of all of these tools, you have six axes of motion that you can use. Forward, back, pivot, up, down, and of course tilt. This walk tool, when you're first getting used to it, will get away from you.
If you find yourself flying too fast, then just let go, and if you find yourself in a position where you have no idea where you are, then you can of course just hit the home button, and it will reset everything for you. So I suggest exploring this Meadowgate building. There's a lot of nooks and crannies.
Check in the ceilings too, because there's some neat coordination items in this building. I'll be mentioning walking around a little bit more in the future, but for the most part, this is the one thing that you need to concentrate and get really good at, because it's what everything else is based on. So with that, I hope you enjoy, and I will see you in the next video.
Thank you.