Discover the ins and outs of Navisworks Managed, Navisworks Freedom, and Revit in this comprehensive guide. This article takes a deep dive into the Navisworks interface, helping you understand various tools, panels, and sections and how to navigate them efficiently.
Key Insights
- The Navisworks interface is divided into distinct sections including the scene, the ribbon, panels, and tabs. The scene is where you view your 3D model data, the ribbon contains tool tabs, and within those tabs are panels, which organize the tools into categories.
- The Navisworks interface is highly customizable. You can change the location of panels within tabs, select different views, dock and undock panels, and adjust panel sizes. Any changes made will remain until you reset them.
- Navisworks includes a feature called 'workspaces' which allows you to save your current layout. You can then modify your layout and revert back to the saved version whenever necessary, giving you the freedom to experiment with your workspace arrangement.
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 to the Navisworks video series. In this series, we'll be covering Navisworks Manage as well as a small amount of Navisworks Freedom, which is the free version of Navisworks without all of the features available in Manage. We’ll also be delving into Revit.
So I highly recommend that you have all three of the programs I just mentioned: Navisworks Manage, Navisworks Freedom, and Revit. For this first video, I'll be exploring the Navisworks interface, so I'll be discussing what the various parts of the interface are called and how we can access them, turn tools on or off, and so forth, so that you understand what I’m referring to later on.
So with that, let's get started. Navisworks is the program that I have on screen right now, and it's divided into several sections. The first section, which is the most noticeable, is the large black area—I like to call this the scene.
The scene is where you're going to view all of your model and appended model data. When you load up a project, you'll see the three-dimensional content in this area. The second major section is the ribbon, which is the large rectangular white area near the top of your Navisworks screen. It is divided into tabs. When you select a tab, the available tools within it will update.
By default, we have eight tabs to choose from. For example, I'll select my Home tab. The ribbon is divided into panels, and the panels are separated by vertical lines, or pinstripes. Each of these panels has a title.
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The purpose of the panels is to organize your tools—represented as icons—into similar categories. For instance, under the Visibility panel, you will find a number of visibility-related tools. You also have the ability to change the location of your panels within a tab.
For example, if I want my Visibility panel to be to the right-hand side of the Tools panel, I can click and drag that panel to a different position, and it will remain there until you reset it to its original position. If we were to close and reopen the program, it would retain your panel positions and preferences. Some panels contain other types of hidden tools, and these are organized in what are called flyouts.
You can identify panels that contain flyouts if there is a down arrow next to the panel title. If you drag your cursor over the title, it will turn blue. Clicking on it will open a flyout menu containing additional tools. We will be using some of these—not all of them—but if you’re ever missing a tool or looking for something, make sure to check any panel with a down arrow for additional options.
In addition to those, there are also what are called Dialog Launchers. These are the diagonal arrows in the bottom-right corner of the titles of the panels, and they launch dialog boxes or additional tools. In this case, when I selected the arrow—it opened a panel, which is a specialized tool.
Now, the way that these panels work is that when they are open, you’ll see they are docked to one side of the screen or another.
If I were to deselect this panel, then it would fly back into a tab. I can see that this tab is now on the right-hand side. If I hover my cursor over it, the panel will fly back out, and if I click back into the scene, the panel will disappear again. We can keep panels open by selecting the Auto Hide tack—see how the tack now points toward the screen?
That means if I select my scene or do anything else, the panel will remain open. It will stay open until I turn off Auto Hide or close the panel altogether. When I close the panel, the tab disappears, and I’ll need to reopen the tool by selecting the Dialog Launcher again or by using whatever command activates the panel.
You can also change the position of the panel. Keep in mind this only works when Auto Hide is turned off, which is indicated by the tack pointing toward the screen rather than showing the side view.
To change the panel’s position, click on its title bar and drag your cursor. You’ll see predefined docking zones appear. For example, if I drag the Saved Viewpoints panel over to the left and release the mouse button, the panel docks to the left-hand side of the scene and takes up part of the scene’s display area.
You can undock it and leave it floating if you prefer, and you can also resize it. The benefit of this is that it doesn’t occupy any scene space. If a model were open, it would remain visible behind the panel, though the panel might obscure certain parts of the view.
You might also notice that the Auto Hide tack is now gone when the panel is undocked. In that case, you won’t be able to auto-hide the window—you would need to close it manually. I personally like docking panels for Auto Hide functionality, but the interface is very customizable, and you can adjust it to suit your workflow.
To resize a panel, simply drag your cursor over the edge of the panel. Left-click, drag, and release to adjust its size.
Other menus in the program include the Quick Launch bar, which is located in the top-left corner of your screen. This contains some useful features like New File, Open File, Save File, Print, and other commonly used commands you would typically find on easy-access menus in other Autodesk programs or Microsoft Word. At the very top-left is the Navisworks Application Menu.
You’ll notice that some of the features in the Application Menu are the same as those found in the Quick Launch bar. However, this menu is best used for accessing Options and for viewing a list of your most recently opened documents. We’ll be exploring some of these options in a future video.
On the top-right of the program is the Subscription bar, and this contains many of the online resources that Autodesk includes with its suite of programs. The most useful tool for this course may be the search bar—you can search for any help topic using this bar and find a number of forum resources as well as official documentation that may help answer any questions that arise. If you have an Autodesk account, you can also sign in from this bar.
As I mentioned before, any changes you make to your window or program layout will be retained when you close and reopen the program. However, if you’d like to save a specific set of workspace options, you can use a tool called Workspaces. This allows you to save your current layout and later return to it or switch to another custom layout.
In the View tab, within the Workspaces panel, there are some preset workspaces available. If you go to Load Workspace, Navisworks has a few configurations you might want to explore.
You can select the Minimal option, which turns off all panels. You can also select one called Extended, which opens up additional tools. If you’d like to save your own layout, you can click the Save Workspace icon and store your custom workspace file wherever you prefer.
That concludes the initial look at the Navisworks interface.
We’ll be going into more detail about the interface as we begin working with the tools included in the software. Don’t hesitate to explore and customize how your Navisworks looks and functions—you can always revert back to the original workspace layout if needed. Enjoy, and I’ll see you in the next video. Thank you.