The Autodesk Navisworks Manage and Simulate 2014 have been released. My colleagues Paul and Lee have given the introduction about the new releases on their blog:
http://beyonddesign.typepad.com/posts/2013/03/whats-new-in-navisworks-2014.html
I'm going to provide series of articles with an overview of some of the enhancements, which are of interests to us before I explain about their APIs. Today we start to see the new and enhanced features in both Navisworks Manage and Navisworks Simulate.
The snapshot is the new splash of the desktop. I personally like it :-)
The biggest feature of desktop version is Quantification.
It adds more powerful quantification to the coordination model. The quantification feature set enables more customers to bring quantities from an aggregated model into a project. It enables quantities to be generated in several ways;
•Automated takeoff from object parameters
•Manual takeoff for modeled objects
•Virtual Takeoff for ‘un-modeled objects’
The new methods for generating quantities from and alongside a model, provide the opportunity to go from highly detailed models to virtually no details and still enable proper quantity takeoff. This flexibility provides powerful quantification tools to benefit the pre-construction process when using Building Information Models.
The quantification workflow is enabled by leveraging Item and Resource catalogs. These catalogs enable the creation, classification, and management of objects and their properties for detailed quantity takeoff. The items are associated with resources. Both items and resources can use formulas to add detailed quantities that leverage model properties, manual calculations, or virtual quantities for things that are not modeled.
A workbook is also included that creates a running report of all quantities in the model, aggregated according to the item and resource structure, which can be exported for downstream workflows including use in widely-used estimating applications.
Lastly, the quantification capabilities also enable a change management workflow, where updates to models can be analyzed, compared and tracked to help see and take action on where designs or properties have changed quickly and easily for the purpose of quantification.
For more detailed guide, please refer to Autodesk wiki help: Quantification