Discover how to use the redline tool in Navisworks, an essential tool for annotating and marking up 3D models effectively. Learn how to create and save viewpoints, add freehand notes, and use various redline tools such as text, draw, erase, and others with the metalgate.nwd model.
Key Insights
- The redline tool allows users to make on-screen annotations, usually freehand, which are saved within viewpoints. To add a redline, a user must start with a viewpoint.
- The redline panel offers several options for marking up a viewpoint, including adding text, drawing, erasing, and changing colors or line weights. Each tool has a unique function and use.
- Redlines are two-dimensional and disappear once a user navigates away from the viewpoint they are saved in. They only reappear when the specific viewpoint is reselected. Changes made to redlines, including erasures, overwrite the previously saved annotations.
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Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. In this video I'll be covering the redline tool and we'll be using the metalgate.nwd model and once you have that file open make sure that your saved viewpoints are open. Mine was just auto hidden so if you don't have the tab here then go up to the viewpoint tab in the save load and playback panel and select your saved viewpoints dialog launcher and that will come up and hopefully be docked.
So with redlines we're really continuing to talk about saved viewpoints. A redline is an on-screen note that's usually freehand and those notes are saved within the viewpoints so you have to be sure that you are starting with a viewpoint when you start to redline. So let's walk toward the sign and focus on it for this portion of the video and I'd like you just to get to a position where that's almost centered and then once you get to that point you can hit the save viewpoint button and we can name this viewpoint sign.
So right now we are in a viewpoint we'll see that our viewpoint is selected. Go to the review tab and the second panel the one that's next to your measure panel is your redline panel and we have a few options about what we can redline or draw on this viewpoint. First one we have text and text works like this you don't actually draw a text box you just click and when you click you can type whatever we want in this dialog box and we'll see that whatever we typed will be displayed starting from the text at the bottom left starting from where we clicked.
So where I'm holding the cursor right now is where your text will be positioned. It's important to note that this text is two-dimensional and it treats the window as if it's two-dimensional. What I mean is that if I were to walk forward those redlines would first disappear and they would only reappear if I selected that sign viewpoint the one that those redlines are saved in.
We can also use the draw redlines and that's a split button. The top of the split button is the previously used tool and the bottom are all of the tools that we can use. So let's start with the cloud tool and the way this works it works in a clockwise direction and you want to click for every cloud parabola and to finish just get near to the first one you started with and if you deselect the tool or move your cursor away from the cloud onto a different tool then it will close by itself.
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If you make a mistake you can use the erase tool and this works by um with a crossing so if you cross around all of the things you want to erase then it will erase them. You can also change the color of your redlines before you put them down. So for example if I were to draw an ellipse I can't change the color of that ellipse there's no way to select it but I can draw another one by changing the color or changing the line weight and then drawing a new one.
The free hand tool is a one-to-one motion tool so as I hold down the left mouse button it will draw and it will draw everything that I or every place that I move the cursor while I have my left mouse button held down. The line tool is a point-to-point tool just like the measure point-to-point so I can click and it'll draw a line between the two points that I click. Line string allows you to click multiple points and it will continue to follow the points until you select a different tool or use the erase tool select the erase tool and then arrow will allow you to draw an arrow point-to-point.
If I want to point at the sign click and those are the basics of the redline tool. So keep in mind that whenever you have a viewpoint selected and you have the red lines for that viewpoint showing then anything that you do to them will actually overwrite. If I erased those arrows and then I say navigate away from that viewpoint and I go back to it those arrows will be gone.
So keep in mind that they're only saved for as long as you don't erase or change those red lines. So as simple as that was that is the redline tool. Thanks for watching this video.
I will see you in the next one. Thank you.