Continued.. “No suitable geometry found” when exporting from Revit to NWC

If you are getting the “No suitable geometry found…” error message when trying to export to NWC, there may be a number of causes.

Luke Johnson has posted a blog with a number of different workarounds which you can find here:

There are also various forum posts and an Autodesk solution page, where you can find more potential causes.

In my case, none of these workarounds were applicable to the issue.

A small bit of background info on my case:

• Revit model recently upgraded from Revit 2013 to Revit 2014
• Had exported to NWC without an issue before upgrading
• In-place families were used for some Façade elements

When I turned off ALL categories via the Visibility/Graphics (VG) menu, I noticed there were still a number of elements which were visible. This shouldn’t be the case, as all elements in Revit are categorised under the categories listed in the VG menu, so therefore when you turn off all categories, you’d expect to see an empty screen.

I then deleted these elements, turned all the categories back on and tried to re-export to NWC – finally, successfully.

When I mentioned this to the consultant I was working with, he looked into it further and noticed that the ‘Profile’ category, which was a selectable option in Revit 2013 when creating an In-Place family, had been removed in Revit 2014.

During the upgrade procedure, Revit had changed these ‘Profile’ category elements (which no longer exist in Revit 2014) into a category called ‘Other’, which is not a ‘properly defined’ category inside of Revit. Therefore, these ‘uncategorised’ elements were causing the NWC export to fail.

The consultant was then able to re-model these elements under the ‘Wall’ category, and all was well again!

Advertisement

Naviswork Switchback with Revit

Trying to find those saved viewpoints from Navisworks in your Revit model?

Navisworks switchback is an excellent and very simple tool to use, to find referring views from Navisworks in your Revit project.

When making issue reports / clash views it is sometimes difficult to find the same referring view in your Revit project – Navisworks Switchback makes this seamless. Below is a short video showing how it works.

If you are using someone elses model you may find that you may need an additional step of locating the Revit model as the original file is being referenced from the authors server – Simply browse for your local version of the Revit model.

Autodesk BIM curriculum for students

Today I am just posting a short blog post about Autodesk’s BIM curriculum, which contains some useful videos and tutorials I found a while back on Autodesk’s website. I have worked through the curriculum and found many elements of it to be extremely useful. For newly graduated students, and anyone who is new to the process of BIM, I would highly reccomend this ‘BIM curriculum’ as a good starting point to bring you up to date with what you need to know. 

The curriculum starts with the very basics of 3D modeling in Revit, up to 4D simulation in Navisworks as seen in the video above. Aside from this, you will gain a good understanding of how worksets and phases work in Revit Architecture, as well as the basics of work sharing. All of these elements are essential tools in a working environment, and may be elements which students did not have the oppurtunity to learn in their universities.  

Not only are there video tutorials to follow, but also exercises to complete for students as well as an assesment system. In some of the topics, powerpoint presentations are also attached to help give a better understanding. I would reccomend this to anyone who wants to know the basics of BIM, or even to teachers and educators looking for some teaching inspirations for their students! The whole course is free and available for anyone to use and learn from.

View the Autodesk BIM curriculum here
 

Navisworks with Revit

I found this video a few weeks ago which showed one of the new features in the 2013 release of Autodesk Navisworks. This Autodesk Navisworks Learning video shows you how you can work with Revit models in Navisworks. You’ll learn how to open Revit files in Navisworks, see how the Revit properties are imported with the model, and learn how to improve your workflows with the switchback functionality. This is one of the features in the 2013 which further aids the collaboration process between parties using different software packages.

I will now post a few tutorial videos which highlight some of the key features of the software to those who do not use Navisworks. Clash detection is one of the key aspects of Navisworks that has seperated it from other packages in the past. This Autodesk Navisworks Learning video shows you how to navigate and understand Clash Detective. Clash Detective enables you to identify clashes between objects in your model, so that you can resolve problems at the design stage. Clash detection has been used on many large BIM projects, significant savings made through spotting and solving clashes before they are built.

Another excellent feature of Navisworks is the TimeLiner. TimeLiner allows you to attach an external schedule to your project, and then link them to model items giving accurates schedules and time lines. This Autodesk Navisworks Learning video shows you around TimeLiner. TimeLiner enables you to connect a Navisworks model to an external project schedule, then attach scheduled tasks to model items and create a simulation to virtually construct your project. This tool, once set up will allow you to see a 3D virtual construction of your building as it would be built on site.

This Autodesk Navisworks Learning video shows you how to inspect selected items. You can inspect a selection from the Selection Tree or Scene View. Alternatively, choose a Selection Set or a Search Set. You can then zoom the selection to display it within the model, or modify it by deselecting objects and adding property definitions.

More information about Autodesk Navisworks can be found here.

Visit the Autodesk YouTube channel for more videos.