Discover the utility of the Switchback tool, added to Navisworks a few years ago, that allows you to select an item in Navisworks and then open the view of that same item in Revit. This tool bridges the gap between screen visuals and the actual upstream edits needed in complex models used in building design and construction.
Key Insights
- Switchback is an innovative tool in Navisworks that allows users to select an item in Navisworks and then directly open the view of that same item in Revit for editing. This feature is vital in coordinating edits between these two platforms.
- For efficient operation, users need to have all the files they potentially want to edit open in Revit. Afterward, they can activate the link between Navisworks and Revit by selecting the Navisworks Switchback under External Tools in the Add-ins tab.
- Switchback is not only useful for locating clashes, but it also extends to a variety of objects in the models, including architectural elements like windows. However, alterations made in Revit will not be reflected in Navisworks until the NWC is exported again.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. In this video, I'll be showing you a really neat tool called Switchback. This video requires you to have Revit open.
I currently have my Revit running in the background. And we'll be opening up the bim361complete.nwf model in the Lesson 6 folder. Now, Switchback is a tool that was added to Navisworks a few years ago, and it allows you to select an item in Navisworks, and then just select Switchback, and then it will open up the view that has this exact item selected in Revit.
So it really tries to bridge the gap between what we're seeing on screen here and what needs to be actually edited upstream. After opening up the file that we want to use, which is the bim361complete.nwf file, we need to open up all the files in Revit that we want to potentially edit. So let's go to Open in Revit, and in your Lesson 2 folder, you'll see the Architectural MEP and Structural models.
Let's open up the Architectural, and go straight back to Open, open up MEP, and then go back to Open, and open Structural. If you get this error, all Revit's telling you is that you have one of the files open that also contains the file you're opening. If you'd like to proceed, just hit Yes, and what it will do is it'll take it out of whatever file it has linked into, which is probably the Architectural, and then it will open up the file and be fine.
Next, you'll want to go up to the Add-ins tab, and then under External Tools, select Navisworks Switchback. This turns on the link between Navisworks and Revit. Now we can go back to Navisworks, and let's go to the Structural versus Plumbing clash test, and let's take a look at Group 2. We've discovered what the problem is with Group 2. We see that all these pipes need to be lowered below the Structural, and even more than that, we can tell that it needs to be lowered by at least one foot and two inches.
Learn CAD
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
So to select the same object in Revit in order to edit, we just have to select one of the objects. I'm just selecting this pipe, and then I'm going to go right-click on it and select Switchback. Now you don't see my taskbar right now, but you'll see Revit blink, and then if you open up Revit, you'll see that in the MEP file, which is what houses this pipe, Navisworks has created a view within Revit called Navisworks Switchback, and that is a temporary view that shows the current item that you had selected in Navisworks.
I'm not going to get too far into Revit since this is not a Revit class, but you can change the crop region if you'd like and see a little bit more of the problem. And then if you are this trade or are handy enough, you can easily move this down into the right position. Let's try that out with a few other items.
Let's try Structural this time. I'm going to select any object. It doesn't even have to be a Clash object.
Right-click and then Switchback, and then Revit with our open file will highlight that object and show you a little image of it. And of course, we can expand our crop region to see a little more of it. This tool is not limited to just Structural and Mechanical.
We can also do this with Architectural. I'm turning off Clash Detective, and I'm going to go to Full Render, and I'm just going to pick one object. It could be a window.
Switchback, and there we go. And from here, we can, say, change the size of the window or do whatever we need to in order to make this right. Please note that none of the changes that you make in Revit will be reflected in Navisworks until you export the NWC again.
So this tool is mostly just a way to find your Clashes in Revit from Navisworks, and not necessarily to find objects in Navisworks from Revit. Before we go, one thing that I'd like to do is to save this workspace while we have it open. And we're going to start moving away from Clash Detective, but we'll be doing one more thing with it, and it's nice to be able to go back to this exact layout in the future.
So to save this workspace, go to the View tab, and then with all of your tiles the way that you want them, go to Save Workspace. Let's call this one Clash, and the default Save, and then we can unpin everything that we need to in order to see a bigger picture of our scene. And if we ever need to go back to Clash, we can just go to Load Workspace and then select Clash.
I hope Switchback ends up being useful for you. I hope you enjoyed this video, and I'll see you in the next one.