In coordination with the Ideate, Inc. YouTube video on Autodesk Navisworks 2014 – Clash Detective Enhancements, this post describes how options added to Clash Detective will help you distinguish between clashing objects and prepare better reports with updatable views of clashes.
There was only one selection color within the clash detective which was an unnecessary constraint. New functionality has been added so the user can assign separate colors of choice to items in a clash, for each of the two systems being checked.
This makes it easy to distinguish similar systems, say piping or ducts, one from the other. The columns for a clash report also have a new viewpoints column that gives the user more control in automatically or manually saving custom viewpoints of the clash images.
There is also a simplified button choice to help isolate clashes where the user can show the context dimmed or isolate just the clash items and an option to show clashes by selection color or by status color for new, active, reviewed, approved, and resolved clashes.
These enhancements reduce the need for workarounds, placing necessary control options within the clash detective feature. The new features targeting the following use cases:
- You have systems being checked for a clash that are visually similar, duct with duct, pipe against pipe and you need to clearly distinguish by color which item in the clash belongs to which system. Two selection colors let you do this.
- You want to generate a clash report that shows the status of clash items rather than the selected items and you now have a single setting that lets you chose selection or status.
- You want to save a custom viewpoint that more clearly shows the clash and a right-click in the new viewpoint column lets you do that.
Don’t forget to look through the great features our Ideate Technical Team has found in the new 2014 releases for Revit Architecture, Revit MEP, Revit Structure, Civil 3D, AutoCAD, and more.
For more information on the software solutions, training, and consulting Ideate provides, please visit the Ideate, Inc. homepage.
Jim Cowan
AEC Senior Application Specialist
Jim Cowan’s extensive AEC design industry experience, Autodesk design solutions expertise, and status as an Autodesk Certified Instructor have made him a sought after university curriculum developer, instructor, and presenter. Jim’s areas of expertise include eLearning, interoperability between solutions, and overcoming barriers to the adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM). Educated in Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art/Heriot–Watt University and in Landscape Architecture at the University of Manitoba, Jim has a special focus on sustainability issues: daylight analysis, sun studies, lighting analysis, modeling buildings, and conceptual energy modeling (models with shading devices). You can learn more from Jim on his YouTube Channel.