Discover the powerful capabilities of Clash Detective, a tool within Navisworks designed to check for interference between model objects in one or multiple models. This article provides an introductory exploration into the tool's features and functionalities.
Key Insights
- Clash Detective, the biggest tool in Navisworks, enables users to create rules, boundaries, properties, conduct clash tests, and manipulate the tests for their project. It allows clashing of entire files, layers against geometry or other objects, solid surfaces against wireframes, or point clouds against other geometries or lines.
- The Clash Detective panel provides options to set the clash type to be either hard, clearance, or search for duplicates. It also allows users to set a tolerance range, with the clashed results appearing in the results tab in numerical order.
- Clash Detective offers the ability to export a report in various formats, including HTML and XML. This feature allows users to transfer detected clashes to other team members who may not have Navisworks, enabling them to view the reports and the 3D model without the Clash Detective tool in Navisworks Freedom.
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Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. In this video, I'll be introducing you to Clash Detective. Clash Detective is the tool in Navisworks that allows you to check for interference between model objects in one model or multiple models.
This is an introduction video, so we will not be conducting any clash tests during this video, but rather I'll be showing you through the tools and the tools features. I have the heatingplant.nwd model open right now, if you'd like to open that as well and follow along, you can simply go to the lesson 6 folder and then go to heatingplant.nwd, making sure your files of type is set to either all files or Navisworks.nwd and then hit open. We're not conducting any clashes again, so this is just to have an example of some model open while we're looking at the Clash Detective panel.
If you have animator or scripter open, you can turn those off right now, and so we'll have a larger area to work with, and then it's also useful to auto-hide your other panels so that we have room for the giant Clash Detective panel. It's the biggest tool in the in the program. To turn it on, go to the home tab and then go to the Clash Detective button and turn that on, and you can expand or, uh, not exactly collapse, but you can make the panel larger or smaller, and this panel is divided up into a number of tabs right here.
Each of the tabs allows you to create rules, boundaries, properties, conduct clash tests, make clash batches, and so forth. It just allows you to manipulate the tests for your project. You can expand and collapse your test area by hitting the up or down button, and you'll be able to create tests by selecting add test and then using the panel below to decide what you want to clash against what else.
You can clash entire files against entire files, you can clash the same file against the same file, and you can clash entire layers against geometry or other objects. The combination between the two selections is nearly infinite. If you have a three-dimensional model, you can clash surfaces.
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If you have a, say, three or two-dimensional wireframe model, you can clash wireframe against solid surfaces, against other wireframes, or against point clouds. If you have a 3D scan of your building, you can use the point cloud in order to clash those point clouds against either other point clouds or other solid geometry or lines. You can set the clash type to be either hard, which means that an object is within another object or is touching it.
You can set a clearance, or you can search for duplicates between two selections in selection A and selection B. You can set a tolerance so that your objects can be within each other as large as two feet. For example, it could be 100 feet if you really wanted to. Your results will appear in the results tab.
If we run a test, then we'll see all of our clashes lined up here in numerical order, and we have the ability to group those together to organize them. We can also change the way that our clashes show up. We can use item colors, or we can use the status color, which corresponds with one of these columns that are in your test window.
We can dimOther and hideOther to better see our clashes. If we dimOther, then everything will be gray except for the clashes, which will appear in their selected highlighting color. And if we hideOther, only the clashes will be visible that are currently selected.
We will look more at the viewpoints once we have a clash test to look at, and then we can change the way that our Timeliner simulation shows up within our clash test. We haven't covered Timeliner yet, so we're going to leave the show simulation off whenever we run a test for now. With Clash Detective, you have the ability to export a report to a number of different formats, including HTML and XML.
It also allows you to export images for your reports so that you can transfer much of what Navisworks has detected to other groups in your team, and so they can view them without actually having Navisworks. You can also send them a report that is an NWD format that includes the three-dimensional model without the Clash Detective tool so that they can view it for free within Navisworks Freedom. We'll be covering all of that in the upcoming videos, and I look forward to getting into all of these features with you.
This is a powerful tool and the biggest reason why people use Navisworks.