Discover how to effectively utilize viewpoints within the Navisworks modeling framework. Learn how to create and access viewpoints, and understand how viewpoints can contain crucial information like visibility, frame rate, and more.
Key Insights
- The Navisworks model allows users to create and access viewpoints - saved views that can contain information like visibility, frame rate, and more. These viewpoints can be navigated much like a 'home' view, and can be used to save multiple views within a single project.
- Viewpoints can be manually ordered, renamed, and even duplicated within the Navisworks model. These viewpoints only save when explicitly told to do so, meaning users can navigate away from a viewpoint without changing its saved state.
- Users are also able to manipulate the properties of viewpoints, adjusting factors like the field of view (FOV) and the perspective versus orthographic views. The Navisworks model also allows users to change the render style for every viewpoint, thereby facilitating a variety of different modes and viewpoints within the same project.
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Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. In this video, we'll be looking at Viewpoints—what they do, how to create them, and then how to access them. We'll be using the Meadowgate model for this video.
So the first time we used this model, we took a look at how to use the ViewCube and how to create a Home view. The Home view is, of course, a view that we can save and then go back to in the case that we want to see this Home view. Or if we get lost, we can go straight back to it and know where we are.
If I were to navigate away and I hit Home, I would go straight back. Well, Viewpoints work the same way, except you can have a lot of them. They also hold some information like visibility—what things are hidden, how fast your frame rate is, etc. We’ll be looking at how to save multiple views within your project.
So first off, let's go up to the Viewpoint tab. In the Viewpoint tab, you'll see that the first panel on the left is called Save, Load, and Playback. This is what controls our Viewpoints.
There is a panel or tool that you can use that shows you all your saved Viewpoints, and you can access that by hitting this little Dialog Launcher. Now, the Meadowgate.nwd file has some saved Viewpoints. To access each of these saved Viewpoints, simply click on each of them, and you'll see that it changes the camera position to the one defined by that Viewpoint.
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You should also note that you can change the names of these Viewpoints by right-clicking and selecting Rename. You can call this anything you'd like. You can have two Viewpoints with the same name.
You may, after a while, confuse the two or three or four, but just know that Navisworks will not prompt you if you have two Viewpoints with the same name. Now, Viewpoints will only be saved if you explicitly tell Navisworks to save a Viewpoint. So for example, if I were in the second Rename—actually let's use External Three, a Viewpoint—and I navigate away from that Viewpoint, I’m no longer in External Three.
It doesn't actually update that Viewpoint. If I were to select it again, it would go back to the original position. If you would like to use a Viewpoint as a starting point to create another Viewpoint, or to update the Viewpoint itself—for example, if I wanted to make a Viewpoint of the sign and I wanted that to actually be External Three—I can right-click on External Three and then go to Update.
Now, if I go back to External Three, this new position is now my Viewpoint. If you don't want to overwrite your Viewpoints—like if I want a view of the sign but farther back—all I have to do is hit Save Viewpoint after I navigate, and you'll see that a new Viewpoint is created at the end of my list. We could call this External Three Two, just as an example.
The program doesn't automatically alphabetize your Viewpoints; it puts them in the order they were created. If you'd like to change the position or the order of your Viewpoints, you can simply drag the Viewpoint to the desired position.
Alternatively, you can right-click on the Saved Viewpoints panel and select Sort, and it will alphabetize your list for you. You can copy Viewpoints as well—if we wanted to copy this one, we can simply select it, right-click, and go to Add Copy.
You'll see that it places a “1” after the name. I'm changing the name to Three, and if I navigate away, right-click, and Update, then that is now my Three Viewpoint position. You can also change other properties of Viewpoints. For example, if we go to External Three Two, the Viewpoint tab has a number of Viewpoint properties.
One of the easiest to see is the FOV, or Field of View. This changes your vision. The lower the degree, the narrower the cone and the less that you can see. If you increase the angle, then of course your view becomes more distorted.
Changing your FOV may be necessary in cases where you are, say, inside a ceiling and need to see more. You'll notice more clipping involved when you increase the angle too much. And of course, to save your FOV to a Viewpoint, you would simply right-click and go to Update.
Now, when I updated Three Two, Navisworks applied the properties of not just the camera position and angle, but also other settings like my FOV. If I go back to Three Point Three, we’ll see that this FOV is back to default. Three Point Two changes it again. Yours may read differently because I’m adjusting the slider, but the value will reflect whatever setting you choose.
Some other properties include perspective versus orthographic. For example, if I go to External Five, you can change from Perspective to Orthographic. And this one lost me a little bit—there we go. You'll see that it's now a parallel projection instead of a perspective projection. You’ll notice that your FOV is now grayed out because there's no longer a cone of vision.
All lines are parallel with each other. If you save this Viewpoint, you’ll notice that the icon for that view is now different from the rest. This icon corresponds to the Perspective vs. Orthographic view type.
You may also change the Render Style for every Viewpoint. For External Four, we can change the Render Mode to, say, Hidden Line, for example, and save this Viewpoint. If we go back to External Four, we’ll see that we can change straight from Hidden Line to Full Render.
This can be useful if you want to save a number of different modes into Viewpoints as a kind of jumping-off point. If we were to name this one Hidden Line, then we’ll know that as soon as we select the Hidden Line view, our Render Style will change. From this Render Style, we can then create other Viewpoints.
Other features include sectioning, walk speed, Transform Color, and other realism options, and we will cover those in future segments. But we definitely need to know the basics of Viewpoints to get to the next step.
So that concludes the basics of Viewpoints. Thanks for watching this video, and I’ll see you in the next one. Thank you.