Using the Find Items Feature in Navisworks 2012 for Revit Rooms

I've heard some frustrations from people on how to use the Find Items feature in Navisworks 2012 to find Revit rooms within the model.

The first thing that you need to make sure is that the "Export room geometry" option is checked prior to exporting the Revit model to Navisworks 2012.

Then in the "Find Items" dialog accessible from the View tab of the ribbon under the Windows drop-down set the following line in your search:

• Category = Category
• Property = Name
• Condition = =
• Value = Rooms

This will find all Revit rooms in your Navisworks model where you can then save this as a search set for future use without ever having to update your selections.

Navisworks Controls on 64 Bit

If you are running a 64 bit development environment like the rest of the world and have attempted to utilize the Navisworks ViewControl you have probably run into some rather annoying issues. This control will not work in a 64 bit environment at design time in your Visual Studio project, but behold... there is a workaround.

You will need a 32 bit OS where you can install the 32 bit version of Navisworks so you can steal the API dll references that you can use on your 64 bit OS for development. Or if you're super duper lazy, you can just download the one that I'm using and adjust all your Autodesk.Navisworks.Controls references to this 32 bit flavor of the dll for use at design time.

Download the 32 bit control DLL here. Hopefully Autodesk doesn't try to kick my ass for offering this file for download. But after all you can install a 30 day trial to keep this file forever, so no big whoop I guess.

When compiled, the control will work just fine on a 32 bit and 64 bit machine (just like it should otherwise).

Autodesk AEC DevCamp

Well, I can't think of a better topic for my first post here, I just returned from Autodesk DevCamp in Boston. It was interesting discussing all of the new features of the Revit API with the guys at Autodesk that are the actual people developing the API's. It was also interesting meeting Michael Priestman who mans the Navisworks API development for Autodesk.

I think I've got all the technical information I need to turn my Revit scripting app into reality. Stay tuned for some posts where I'll share how I get it done.