How to Use Dynamo to Visibly Show Navisworks Clashes into Revit

FELIX TAN: Hello, everyone. Good afternoon.

RYAN WELLS: How are you guys doing? Oh, yeah.

FELIX TAN: [LAUGHS] Yeah, I just asked this gentleman earlier-- so how are you guys doing? I'm tired. OK, I know. It's the third day. This is the last day. And I know everyone wants to go home.

RYAN WELLS: I do want to go home early. This is just a terrible day to give a class.

FELIX TAN: I know, right? When they told us, OK, this is your slot. What? The last day? Anyway, we will try our best to make this presentation as exciting as possible.

RYAN WELLS: At least a little bit interesting. Hopefully, you'll laugh once in a while.

FELIX TAN: OK, my name is Felix-- Felix Tan. I am from Stantec. I'm the BIM Manager there. And My work experience in the line of architecture spans around 20. Half that is in the Philippines as an architect, focuses on design and construction. And the other half is in Canada in Vancouver. So here is Ryan.

RYAN WELLS: I am another BIM Manager at the Vancouver office for Stantec. I'm-- I don't know-- 12 or so years in the business, I guess. And mostly in architecture-- I'm just a BIM geek now, dealing with whatever needs help and addressing this, that, and the other. So today we've got hopefully a class that's going to be at least a little bit interesting for you.

Something that I've noticed-- I don't know if you've seen the same-- a lot of these classes have been sort of show up and there's a presentation and vague outline of how people did things, but not really getting to very specifics. So hopefully we can show you a specific technique can actually get through all the steps, and you can use it afterwards.

FELIX TAN: Yeah. We would also want to say thank you to Autodesk for allowing us to share the discoveries that we have and the processes and workflows that we can share. So at the end of this day or this conference, you can take this-- you'll see it beneficial and take it with you, bring it home, use it, and make it yours.

RYAN WELLS: Though we've got the data set and the--

FELIX TAN: Though the data set-- here's the thing. We can't upload it when we uploaded our presentation files. So the plan is I'll send you an email-- every one of you. [INAUDIBLE] the upload location of maybe on FTP probably, or a Dropbox of some sort. That will upload all of our files. We will send you the clash family itself, the Dynamo script, and we also created a Revit template that all of the schedules are there. And even this generic model is already in there. So all you need to do is to use it, all right?

RYAN WELLS: Useful.

FELIX TAN: Yeah, all right, so--

[CHUCKLING]

RYAN WELLS: Maybe you guys have seen this slide. I don't know. Felix threw this in just before the presentation and caught me off guard. But, you know, we really like this idea. It kind of speaks to what we try to do anyway. And hopefully with this, we will be able to do more collaboration, more coordination. We'll do it better by dealing with the software we're already familiar with without having to jump around too much, and do with less time and less effort to go through this process. So it looks good.

FELIX TAN: Yeah, you got it.

[CHUCKLING]

OK, learning objectives. First, we will learn how to simplify our coordination between Revit and Navisworks and back. And we'll learn how to easily locate those clashes that the Navisworks picked up using a Dynamo script so we can see it right away in Revit.

RYAN WELLS: And we're going to use the Revit Schedule-- just the out-of-the-box Revit tool-- to highlight those clashes and to tabulate them all in a model. And then we will just use some metadata, some parameters, to fill in some comments to be able to distribute to the team. It's a little bit of schedule and view filtering to control what this looks like and making it easy for the team to digest this stuff and make the changes, catch it all up.

FELIX TAN: OK, how about here, Ryan?

RYAN WELLS: Yeah, so we have to assume a certain level of knowledge and ability in going through this. So what this is not is a Navisworks walkthrough, right? We have to assume that you know how to do your exports to set up the Navisworks model, and basically also to be able to do a clash resolution or a clash avoidance meeting. You know, there's just not enough time to talk about all this. That's a whole series of courses to go through that.

But with the pics and clicks provided in the handout, you really can go through the basic steps there. But cleaning up the number of clashes and getting your giant report down to a digestible size-- it's still on you.

And then we're not going to get too deeply into how to use Revit Scheduler. Again, we're assuming you've got some basic ability to put those things together. We'll show you the pieces that are there, how it's put together, how to filter, and all of that. But we're not getting really into detail with that.

FELIX TAN: Right, so-- oh, people are still coming. That's good. But we would like to know everyone here-- well, not each one of you, but by a show of hands, who are the people here who are in the architectural field? Wow, that's a big percentage. How about the engineering MEP Structural? OK, how about builders? Got quite a number. Good.

RYAN WELLS: Owners? All right, look at that.

FELIX TAN: Oh, good, good.

RYAN WELLS: What a smattering. We've got a little bit of everybody here.

FELIX TAN: Yeah, a good mix. So the question is, why did we choose this topic? Why do we want to share it with you? Well, anyone of you familiar with this? It's clash report from Revit-- oh, sorry, not Revit, but Navisworks. And to be exact, it's an HTML that I opened using Chrome or Internet Explorer. Or you can import that or export that, put it in an Excel file, and send it to people.

Well, I had that same experience way back-- way back before I learned how to use Navisworks. A consultant sent me a file-- not a PDF, but a binder this thick. To be exact, four inches. And they said-- and it's full of paper, right? So why ask him, OK, what's this? Well, those are your clashes. Those are the reports from Navisworks.

RYAN WELLS: What do I do with this?

FELIX TAN: Yeah, exactly. What am I going to do with this? Well, start fixing your model. But how? Well, go one at a time and fix it. But then that's, like, a thousand clashes. OK, start now. [LAUGHS]

So, you know, what I-- which I did. I went. And I went here and-- oh, I don't know if you can see it, but I went to the Item ID, get the element number, went to Revit, tried to locate it. So this is the issue. I fix it. Done. And then what's next? Well, there's more. There's thousands more. So I said to myself, there should be an easier way for me to see all of those clashes right away.

Well, good enough. There's a guy the name of Cesare Caoduro. Well, he's an Autodesk guy. And hey, you-- speak for himself. I don't know if he's here. Are you here, Cesare? No, he's not. Whoo. Well, he created good things. [PHEW] [SIGH]

Well, he created a very simple, Dynamo script where he used that script, get the information from Navisworks, use a generic model which is a sphere to point out or to point where those clashes are back in Revit. So this is an example of that clash sphere.

RYAN WELLS: It's the little red balls there, just in case.

FELIX TAN: Yeah. So yeah, so we were going to use Revit, export our NWC, go to Navisworks, and do the clashes. So those are the steps that he's going to do, or we are going to do. And use these BIM tools. From Revit to Navisworks, believe it or not, Microsoft Excel is a BIM tool.

RYAN WELLS: And it's a great one. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

FELIX TAN: [LAUGHS] And of course, Dynamo, all right? As you all know, Navisworks has the ability-- has the power to pinpoint the exact XYZ coordinates of those clashes. So we will leverage that information using the report, an XML file, put it in an Excel file, and our Dynamo will pick up that information from Excel. And it will spit out all of those locations using the sphere family, all right? But we're not going to stop there.

RYAN WELLS: We're not?

FELIX TAN: No, we're not. And so now that the spheres are there, what's next?

RYAN WELLS: Yeah, right. So in the Navisworks export, the report that's there-- hopefully you've seen it before. There's a bunch of checkboxes. There's all sorts of metadata that can be included in your report, or you can ignore it because it's not interesting.

We have got a few specific ones that we've got checked that we're going to include in that export. But there's an opportunity to add more metadata, right? What's better than more data? But we're going to use some of it along with those sphere families, populate some of the metadata, and use that in the scheduling.

FELIX TAN: Yeah, if you-- I know Dynamo is somehow complicated for most of us. Well, it isn't for me. But using this script, it's actually pretty straightforward. There are some changes that you need to do or updates where the location of that Excel file is, and you're OK. You'll be OK after that.

So this is an example of what it's going to be after those clashes are being pushed by Dynamo. So without further ado, let's do a demo. So you all know that-- are these-- oh, sorry. [INAUDIBLE] Are these familiar? Yes. Almost? Oh, you know what? I'll just kill this. OK. There you go.

RYAN WELLS: So, what an amazing design you have there, Felix.

FELIX TAN: [LAUGHS] Well, that's just the sample file that we use from Autodesk. We're trying to check if there are some clashes with the samples that Autodesk has given each one of us-- well, for us to use here in this example. So these are the three Revit files and what we need to do.

If you know this free tool or add-in in Revit that you go under External, there's a Navisworks 2017. It's a tool that exports your Revit model to NWC. So you do it once for each of those models. And in advance, I was able to create them.

RYAN WELLS: We weren't really interested in doing a live demo. You know how that tends to go. So we have gone through the necessary steps and pulled out the pieces and-- yeah, the important parts for you here.

FELIX TAN: So we already have the files. And from there, we're going to use Navisworks and open those files for us. [INAUDIBLE] and NWC, select all of them, click Open. Voila. So our 3D models are already there. And let's start creating a new test.

So for this test for the sample, I just want to focus more on the second floor, or level 2. So I'll put L2 against structural and HVAC, for example. And let's go from here, click that just for the second floor.

RYAN WELLS: I thought we weren't doing it live.

FELIX TAN: [CHUCKLES] OK, just for level 2, I'll choose Air Terminal. I'll use my Control key to choose each one of them. So Ducts, Duct Fittings, Flex Ducts, Mechanical Equipment.

RYAN WELLS: And this is that part where, again, you need to have an idea of what it is that's important to you-- what it is that you're clashing, whether you're dealing with the shear wall, the ducts, columns, walls, and now we've got some specific parts.

FELIX TAN: So now that I have selected all of those categories or those components, all I need to do is just run the test. Oh, wow, we have just four.

RYAN WELLS: No way.

FELIX TAN: Good job, Autodesk. [LAUGHS] So let's-- at this point, let's say this is-- let's pretend this is a real project. Don't just export right away the report. Sit down with your team and ask them, is this a legitimate clash, or can we address it on site or whatever? So this is the time that you talk among yourselves.

And so right now, let's just confirm that these are all legitimate. So the HVAC is hitting the column over there and here. And a flex duct is hitting the column. Well, we can skip that, right? But for now, let's accept it as a legitimate clash.

So from here, I'm going to my report, making sure that the Summary, the Clash Point, Date Found, Item ID-- everything that's in the handout anyway. So all I need to do is make sure that my format here expect, which is XML. And I'll click Report. And click-- I don't want to click Save because I already used that. I just want to be sure it's not going to fail.

So once the XML is ready, now you need to open your Excel file. OK. From the desktop, Navisworks, OK. So I'll start first with the base Excel file. So this is what you're going to get when we're going to send you those files. All you need to do-- well, we don't have to explain the whole thing, right?

RYAN WELLS: No, I mean this was part of the tool that was set up by Cesare before. And so it's a template to be able to import that XML data and through some pre-established Excel things here, it's going to populate the schedule-- populate the columns.

FELIX TAN: It's more of letting us just import the XML file. And you don't have to do anything more. Unless, of course, you have other options that you want to include-- any data that you want to include. And this is where you're going to do it.

RYAN WELLS: Yeah, there's opportunities to add some additional metadata if you're interested in tracking more of it. But we'll stick to the basics right now.

FELIX TAN: Right, so I'll do a right-click. And under here, it says there XML. I'm going to Import. And I'm going back to the clash file, Navisworks, and there is my XML. So I'll click Import.

OK, we have to explain something here.

RYAN WELLS: Yeah. We didn't build this thing. We've stolen it and giving it to you. So you see that-- kind of on the right side there, the extra four lines?

FELIX TAN: Here.

RYAN WELLS: We haven't figured out what's going on with this. But we do know that it breaks the script if you leave them there. All you have to do is delete them. Highlight them, Delete key, and then the rest of it works just fine. So a little bit of bugging that needs debugging that hasn't happened here.

FELIX TAN: So that's the only step that you need to do, OK? And just clean it up. Now if I do a right-click--

RYAN WELLS: Ah, flawless.

FELIX TAN: Then Delete-- ah, yeah. There you go. Delete rows. So there you go. Save it. My suggestion-- once you save it, of course, use the niche test that I named it for. Under like, L2 for structural versus HVAC. And then you can date it, of course. And you have to be sure that it's the current one or-- because you'll be doing this on a cycle until you've already addressed all your-- well, almost all of your issues in the clashes.

RYAN WELLS: So for each report that you run, each test that you do, each export that you do is doing a separate Excel file to keep them separate from each other and to make sure that it's all being reported correctly.

FELIX TAN: At this point, now that you have the XML-- so for NWC, or Revit, to Navisworks to Excel, now we're going to use Dynamo. But at this point, you have a choice.

Let's say, for example, there are three models. You may want to import or use Dynamo for each of those models, or what we usually do is we create a separate file and import all of our models and link them, I mean, and then put all of those and run the Dynamo script and see all of those clashes there.

So in that way, we will not disrupt the whole model. Or, you know, people will say, hey, what's wrong? What are these? But that's our intention in the first place.

RYAN WELLS: Yes. So whether you are doing your individual consultant model and bringing those clashes into your own model to take a look and investigate, or something that we like to do is the idea of a BIM [? Q-way ?] model, which is an otherwise blank model-- an empty file.

Link everything in it together, and that's where we add the clashes and run the scheduling and everything, you know, maybe to not scare your team, to make sure that you're not breaking anything else in the main model. But there's nothing dangerous about the way this works either. So it's sort of a preference. Whatever your usual QA process is, it'll just fit right in with that.

FELIX TAN: Right. So this is the template that we were talking about. We have set a view template that all of the linked model or components or categories are set to translucent. So, and I've separated-- or we've separated the-- for HVAC. So we'd see-- you can, of course, tweak this according to which models you want to clash with or to check with.

RYAN WELLS: However you sort of typically visualize your stuff-- you know, when you're looking at structure or mechanical.

FELIX TAN: So now let's click Dynamo Player.

RYAN WELLS: You guys ever seen this before? You use Dynamo Player? Some nods and hands, OK, good.

FELIX TAN: OK, maybe move back a little bit. Let's click the Dynamo-- the other route.

RYAN WELLS: The main--

FELIX TAN: The main-- yep. Let's click it. And explain a little bit of how Cesare did his script.

RYAN WELLS: You want me to run through it?

FELIX TAN: Yeah, sure, please.

RYAN WELLS: So it looks way scarier than it is for anybody that's not really, really familiar with Dynamo. But out of all of this, the only thing that you actually need to worry about is the first-- is the input, and making sure that is the Excel file that we've set up just a moment ago, and making sure that it's pathed to the right location so that it's reading that as the source information to do all of its things and to spit the output on the other side.

But basically, all it's doing is-- here we go. We're reading it from the Excel file. We are listing the items. There wasn't-- if you're dealing with a very long clash report and maybe you're not interested in looking at all of them-- I'll be honest. I haven't quite muddled out why this was set up this way. But this just makes it so that you're choosing every clash in that list. But you could skip some randomly if you wanted to-- maybe if you're just doing kind of spot checks.

In the middle part here, these are the individual nodes that are finding the report columns and bringing all of that information together. This is where we write to the families in Revit. And this is the selector for the type of family that's included. So we've got it set to be the one version that we're interested in here.

But if you have another family with other metadata or parameters that you wanted to be able to use instead, you just need to find it in your model. Choose the appropriate type here. And along with that, make sure that you've got the appropriate parameter names mapped. So we've got matching shared parameters that are in that family already. So these are the ones that are going to be populated by the script.

But if you're really familiar with the family creation and there's other metadata you're interested in-- other shared parameters that you might already have, just rename them here and save your script. And it should work for you as well. So yeah, out of all of that, that's all the secret sauce. But all we're dealing with is one input here.

FELIX TAN: All right, so let's click this just in case where-- I want to make sure that we're using the right Excel file. So this is the file. Click Open. So everything is good.

RYAN WELLS: We have it set to run manually right now.

FELIX TAN: No, because we want to use the player--

RYAN WELLS: That's right.

FELIX TAN: --for that, yeah. Close it. And let's put the Dynamo Player back in.

RYAN WELLS: So again, in case you're not familiar, this is just accessing the script without having to go into Dynamo to access it. And, ah, did we set up the inputs? I'm just going to run.

FELIX TAN: Yeah. Let me just minimize this one here and make it-- OK.

RYAN WELLS: So you can see it all happen at the same time here.

FELIX TAN: Yeah, to see it all happen. So once I click Play-- you know what? Let's turn this off. OK, once I click Play, so you would see, of course, for one, the schedule will populate. And you would see the clash spheres being-- you know, [INAUDIBLE] plays there as well.

RYAN WELLS: Yeah, so we have the master schedule as part of this container file already. And this are the parameters associated with that generic model that are going to be populated by the script.

FELIX TAN: So let's click Play. So what the Dynamo Player will do is-- there.

RYAN WELLS: Woo.

[LAUGHTER]

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

[LAUGHTER]

FELIX TAN: Good job. OK, so the spheres are there. And just confirm that based on what we saw or--

RYAN WELLS: Yeah, that would be like-- kind of the older way of doing this is maybe going around in 3D and looking for those clashes on their own. You know, maybe you weren't dealing with any kind of scheduling before. And just taking a look around, that red kind of stands out pretty nicely on the transparent background with the yellow systems in there.

FELIX TAN: All right.

RYAN WELLS: And as you can see, the schedule's been populated. So we've got some basic information in here right now. And they are related to the location of the clashes. And then some of the additional stuff that I've nested into this family to make it a little more usable is a means of tracking whether this-- in Revit, whether this is an active clash or it's been dealt with by the team. So I'll get into that in a bit.

A means of prioritizing how important the model manager thinks that particular clash is. So again, during the clash discussion, the clash avoidance meeting, whatever you want to call it, everybody comes to some conclusion to say, this one right here-- this is a big deal. We're going to make that a priority 1. But maybe the other ones are a little less critical, a little less time-sensitive, so we'll make him priority 2.

I like to do just kind of a 1, 2, 3. So you don't have a scale of 1 to 100 or anything like that, just as a means of ordering it-- another way of sorting the schedule later on as you get you know longer and longer lists.

The name of the clash that comes from Navisworks, this clash recipient-- and I probably shouldn't have done that-- is going to be who the model manager assigns the particular clash to make the model updates.

And then if there is a particular comment that needs to be applied based on the discussions that happened in the clash resolution meeting or just some additional feedback that the model manager has to provide to his team to get going in the best and fastest way possible. That one's just loose.

So the Date found is depending on how often the clashes are done, how often the model is being updated, you might need to just date it to say, like, this is when I did this one to make sure that older ones are getting addressed first. The Element ID for the clash sphere itself, and then the Status comes from Navisworks. And I'm not entirely sure what we're doing with that. But that's beside the point.

So, concept that I've tried to apply to models that I deal with is the idea of the landing page. And I don't know if you guys use some screen-- you know, your base Sync with Central page to hopefully not have a whole lot of 3D geometry turned on to speed up the sync and all of that.

At Stantec, we have a template. It's a title block that has some-- just information about who the model manager is, what time zone they're in-- because we're all over the world-- you know, some basic information for the team, upcoming time frames or schedules, things that are going on. But what tends to happen is people ignore it, right? It doesn't get populated. And then it's just that static screen that looks the same for every model, every project you're working on. And it gets ignored.

So what I like to do is I'll color it up. I'll throw schedules all over it. I'll do conditional formatting. I'll change the color of text and notes maybe on a daily basis, a weekly basis--who knows-- whatever I think is going to help flag that to the team's attention. So I don't know about you. I'm pretty graphical-visual. If I see-- and all of a sudden, there's bright red in the top-right corner of my Sync with Central screen, I'm going to say, hey, what's going on? I'm going to take a look and see what's going on there.

So in the same way, I like to use the master schedule so that I've got sort of the running total of all of the clashes together. And then I'll also break them up by team member. So if I've decided that clash 1 is going to Jim, I'm going to assign it to Jim. And then his schedule is going to keep growing longer and longer until he gets those things dealt with. And I know who to beat up on if he's not getting them done. And same goes for however many team members there are. Assign them that way and then those schedules will get longer and do whatever needs to happen there.

So getting back into the master schedule. So like I said, we'd go through and start to assign these. Oh, I got to make sure I'm-- and I'm going to assign this one to User1. And just go through-- assign them all. It's riveting, I know. Right, so I've made those decisions as to who's going to get the clashes.

Prioritize them a little bit. Ooh, not minus 1. I haven't added any formulas to restrict the priority there or the integers. As you can see as I'm changing them, it's turning red. You guys use conditional formatting and schedules? Hmm. The unfortunate thing that I found is you can only apply one conditional format, or one condition to each parameter. It'd be nice if you could color code like, red, yellow, orange, or whatever, green. But I just find flagging the worst-case condition as a red helps pretty well here.

Oh no. Well, it's good. We can go through a little how this works. So the user schedules, then, are going to be looking for those particular values for the filtering. Huh, that should work. What happened?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

RYAN WELLS: What's that?

AUDIENCE: You put the user in the wrong--

RYAN WELLS: Did I?

[CHUCKLING]

At least somebody was paying attention. I put it in the comments.

[CHUCKLING]

Look at that. Sorry, guys. See, that's how easy it is-- that somebody in the audience or hasn't seen this before can tell me how I've done it wrong. So where I first put the user comments there, that should have been how we address these-- whatever needs to happen to deal with these things.

All right, hopefully this will work now. There we go. So now User1 is populated, right? And now I've got this teal of color going on for this particular one. But as the clashes get assigned to the individuals, we've got different priorities that are there. And we can start to get some color.

So now, like I said, Jim knows that his teal clashes are the ones that he's going to deal with. And the more teal you see on that page, the more trouble Jim's in.

And then however you want to deal with sorting the schedule, I like to separate them out by the priority first, and then whether they're active or completed. And you can sort of pick whatever suits your model management style to highlight these things.

So using the power of the schedule, if this poor Jim here is getting to work on this and he knows that it's been assigned to him and there's something he's got to deal with, using the Highlight in Model tool, you just select the clash, Highlight in Model, and it's going to take you right to the clash, right? So I don't have to go hunting around in 3D for it. I can just zoom right to it.

And let's see. I'm going to open this up a little bit. So a clash itself-- all the parameters that we've got associated with it. So, yeah, that clash comment really should've been something else. We got the name of the clash, the comment from the model manager to say what needs to be done to address it, who it is that's looking after it. There is the name of the clash test that it came from. I'll skip this one for now. There's that priority. Change it up or down. And it's all that same information.

So when Jim gets to that spot and he follows the direction that the model manager provided for how to deal with this, or it's kind of an obvious thing and he knows how to do it himself, jump in there and get it addressed. Get it resolved. And when he's done, checkbox.

And now going back, I've got this filtered so that completed clashes disappear from the list. And that's this part. So it's looking to see that Active is Yes. You know, it's the opposite of completed. And so now, Jim knows that this is dealt with. It's off his list, and he can move on to something else.

And going back to the master list, I now have a non-active clash. So it's whether on the master list you want to include all of those active clashes or you want to include the completed ones as well-- that's up to you. Filter them out if you don't want to see them.

AUDIENCE: Quick question.

RYAN WELLS: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: How are so--

FELIX TAN: Sorry, do you mind grabbing the mic?

RYAN WELLS: Excellent.

FELIX TAN: Thank you.

AUDIENCE: So if they open a linked model, it'll unload it, right? You can't have a linked model opened at the same time?

RYAN WELLS: OK, so, yeah. That's a good question. With the-- if you're using that QA model and you've got everything linked in, the highlighted model isn't going to work directly, unfortunately. So you still have to kind of hunt it out the old-fashioned way. But if you're in the model-- no, sorry. What am I talking about? The clash is in the model that you're in.

FELIX TAN: It's in the model.

RYAN WELLS: So you're either opening the QA model to take a look-see at what needs to be done or, again, those are being pushed into the individual consultant models anyway. So it's just sort of the way that you want to go about it. Obviously, the model that they're in is where you can use that Highlight in Model to jump to that clash. But it's sort of up to you how you want to keep it separated or bring it together. It doesn't change the functionality.

FELIX TAN: But what I usually do, I open two sessions of Revit and use the model with everyone's linked in-- the clash coordination model. And then the other one is the working model. So whatever I see there, I'll fix it to the other session. I don't know if that would work for you or-- yeah. Where are we at now?

RYAN WELLS: Are there any other questions about the-- yeah, yeah. You want to hit the mic there?

AUDIENCE: I've got actually three questions, so--

RYAN WELLS: Three questions?

AUDIENCE: Yeah, so first thing first. If you're doing everything inside Revit, are you're not using the Revit Interference Check to begin with?

FELIX TAN: I don't know what to say.

RYAN WELLS: I haven't used it. I'm not--

AUDIENCE: And then you don't need to actually pass it through to Navisworks.

FELIX TAN: But you know what? You have a point there. I'd still use that. For anything-- you know, for your team members-- OK, you know what? We don't have to go to Navisworks yet. Visibly, you look at the model. If there are clashes, do a screenshot, send it to people. Or you can use that-- what tool did you mention again?

AUDIENCE: Yeah, Interference Check.

FELIX TAN: Interference Check, yeah.

AUDIENCE: If you go to Collaborate, you see that Interference Check.

FELIX TAN: You can use that, of course. And as a model manager or if you're a user, you can fix the problem right away.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. Secondly, there's going to be case that you get federated model inside Navisworks that has-- some models are coming from other softwares in software. And then is there any way that you could filter the one that you want to get back to Revit? Those are the ones that actually can be solved inside Revit coming from Revit.

Because that would be the mean for using Navisworks-- like getting models from different engines and that. So is there any way to filter it? Because in that case, if you get all those clash coordinates, there would be [INAUDIBLE] false spheres appearing all around the place.

FELIX TAN: Right. Well, that's where Navisworks comes in. It can read FBX-- does it?

RYAN WELLS: Yes.

FELIX TAN: Or DWG and the other format. And that's where you use your clashes. And from there, if-- of course, at the end, like if we are Revit users, we can use that information and still use this process.

AUDIENCE: OK, I'll stop here. And then the third one, which I'm hoping that you want to actually explain, is that what's going to happen to the spheres when we're done?

RYAN WELLS: So when they're gone?

AUDIENCE: Like the spheres that you showed.

RYAN WELLS: So models, or--

AUDIENCE: They're just clash detection elements. So that's it.

RYAN WELLS: So it's up to you whether you keep them in the model or get rid of them moving forward. This isn't, like, logging whether the changes have been applied or what's going on with those. It's just an additional way of following up with this. This isn't to hold anybody's feet to the fire, really. It's more of an internal tool in order to distribute that information to the team to help with modeling, maybe ones that are less savvy in Navisworks and all that as well.

So with that, you know, checking it completed, we can have-- and I've got view filters applied to this. And you can leave them in the model so that there's kind of a record that they were dealt with. And then just turned off-- not globally, but say in your sheet views. For sure, you don't want to see them in there.

AUDIENCE: But you have to make sure that they're right?

RYAN WELLS: Yeah. You still have to follow up and make sure it's sort of addressed.

AUDIENCE: OK, thanks anyway.

RYAN WELLS: All right, thanks for the questions, guys.

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

RYAN WELLS: So the conditional formatting-- real briefly, I've got the CoordinationPriority highlighted here. And we'll just take a look at how it's set up. Choose the parameter you want to apply it to, choose the test you want to apply, and then the matching values.

So equal to 1 is yes. So if the-- sorry, if it's equal to 1. If the CoordinationPriority is equal to 1, then it'll turn it red. So if you want other colors in there or you want to choose whether it's priority 2 or 3 or whatever, that's your choice at that point.

And then like I said, you can only apply one condition per parameter. In the master list, I don't have any filters applied. But if I wanted to say that when the clash recipient is equal to User2-- I'm particularly interested in what Stephanie is up to. Yeah, those ones are going to turn blue.

Mentioned it briefly-- the view filter. So also as part of the template, you don't always want to see these clashes everywhere. And whether you use Workset control to throw them onto something that you have turned off globally and turned on specifically in modeling views, or if in your modeling views you only want to see the active ones, you can make sure that it's set up this way. It's some pretty simple view filters.

The one's in here already. So whether it's Active-- and Active is on. And then to turn off the completed ones, add the Completed filter, turn those ones off. Did I not complete this one? It is completed. Oh no. Why is my demo working so badly?

FELIX TAN: [CHUCKLING]

RYAN WELLS: Oh, and I checked the wrong one. Look at that. There.

FELIX TAN: There you go.

RYAN WELLS: And so that I'll turn it off out of the view. So, you know, it's still there. It's kind of a log of what's happened. And if you're not worried about it, just delete it. It's gone. It's no big deal. It'll either turn up in the next clash and it's still a problem, or it's done and dealt with and you don't have to go back to it.

FELIX TAN: Well, just to add, since you're already fixing your model, it's a cycle. So let's say today, we've already fixed all the issues. And then we'll send our model back to the model manager or BIM manager. Can you run again another clash detection? And from there, eventually the clashes are lesser and lesser.

RYAN WELLS: Theoretically.

FELIX TAN: So it's a cycle until you've already cleared all of those things.

RYAN WELLS: Yeah. And you go through that process as many times as necessary to get everything addressed. So do we want to ask the audience now? Is that where we're at?

FELIX TAN: Yeah, sure. Sure. Basically that's the steps that we want to show you and the steps that we've been doing. But we have some questions.

RYAN WELLS: Yeah, so when we were looking through the attendees for this one, it had looked like there was going to be a lot of builders in-house. And so we were kind of wondering, like, where would you guys use this? Why are you here? Anybody?

AUDIENCE: Oh, I'd like to answer that.

RYAN WELLS: Yeah, yeah. Do you mind? Sorry.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. So we're a small general contractor in Greenville, South Carolina. And one of our workflows is actually maturing the design models into fabrication models. And so the design teams we've been working with are gracious enough to let us use their information to further the project and build to a full fabrication of the model. So all of my detailers are working inside of Revit.

[INAUDIBLE] all my subcontractors or electrical mechanical contractors are working in Revit. And so our fully federated model is all Revit baseline files.

RYAN WELLS: All right, so you'd find this very useful then?

AUDIENCE: Yeah, definitely.

RYAN WELLS: OK, well, that's good. Because we were sort of thinking about it and just not entirely sure how the build side would use it. Typically, we are handing over-- you know, it's a model to become the record model, or that's already a federated model. And it's probably not coming back the other way, generally speaking. And so running additional clashes afterwards, the type of work that we've dealt with in the past-- it's sort of less common. So we were sort of interested. Thank you.

And this is where we were wanting to talk a little bit about how we can take this basic framework and then start to spin out other options and other ways of using it to sort of customize it for your specific interests. And I mentioned briefly places where you could choose your own family to go in there and to just make sure the parameter names are correct, or adding additional parameters to be looked at-- to be sort of added to the schedule.

You know, in the Dynamo script, you've got that-- just the list of parameters that are there. And if you wanted to, it's not too difficult to add additional things to that that are going to get pushed in by this script.

I spent a lot of years in elementary school learning French, and I can't speak French at all, but I can kind of read it a little bit. And that's sort of the way that I treat Dynamo. Like, I know enough to be dangerous and kind of get in there and see what a node does, and then copy, paste, modify, and see what happens with it.

So by following the way these nodes and loops work and by manipulating what is exported with the Navisworks XML file, choosing additional values to be exported out, adding additional columns to the Excel spreadsheet, adding additional parameters to the family, and adding additional nodes to the Dynamo script, you can start to add even more stuff.

Now whether you can make it sort of automated coming directly from Navisworks or you want to populate those things manually, you just kind of see what works for you and sort of what you're interested in adding. But it's really just a case of copying this piece of the node-- or, sorry, this piece of the script, this node, and adding another line to the code block that matches a parameter that you have in that family already. Again, run the script again, and it's going to populate and add those things.

Same kind of thing goes when you're dealing with the schedule itself. You know, there's nothing stopping you from adding additional information-- default information that's already there as part of the generic model, or any additional shared parameters that you want to include.

Anybody have something in mind that they're like, ooh, ooh, I think something cool could be used? Yeah, what do you got?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. It's going to be [INAUDIBLE].

RYAN WELLS: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: That clash sphere schedule-- does that automatically populate when you run the Dynamo script, or is that something we have to custom build? That the clash spheres master schedule-- that one right there.

RYAN WELLS: No, this populates when the script is run.

AUDIENCE: OK, so that creates-- then that creates the sphere in the schedule with all the parameters that you need for that, right?