In this post we broke the news about CADWorx 2011. To cover Clark’s question, I thought I’d post about the upcoming release. First of all there will be a release slated for the end of the user conference in Houston. This release is CADWorx 2011. To clarify the CADWORX Next Generation technology is only a subset of the 2011 release.
There will be more details to follow as a great deal of how specs are being handled is be gone over at this time. Transferring specs into the new format reliably is probably at the top of the priority list. I know we cover different aspects of it in every review we do with the Alpha group.
When anyone references CADWorx Next Generation technology, they are referring to the new method of drawing CADWorx objects, based on a new spec file format. As a result of the new drawing method, object enablers will be used (at the time of this writing). In the last review, the team demonstrated that installing the object enabler for AutoCAD also make the piping objects available in Navisworks. The next wrinkle they are working on is making sure the data is available in Navisworks as well. Rest assured, that viewing CADWorx objects in Navisworks is an extremely high priority.
Of course, the CADWorx team is working very hard to make sure the changing the piping objects will have no impact on the rest of the functionality. Even my custom lisp routines still work. The old xdata format is still preserved on the new objects. For example, our CADWorx Properties palette on the new objects with no modifications.
In my opinion, one feature that is starting to look really good is the Spec editor. The V-Mosaics team (that’s the group developing the Next Generation toolset) has been hard at work adding some great features. In the last review, the team included pictorial samples of the dimensions when you are editing the data table (which is the data file) so that you don’t have to guess what each dimension is.
Super excited about 2011! See you all in Houston so you can get your copy!
On the forums this week a question came up on pipe colors. Most of us are familiar with changing the color of the layer for piping. However, through Navisworks we also have another option. The technique below will show you how to create a search, save it and override the color of the searched items.
In the long run, while changing the color of the pipe in Navisworks is cool, knowing how to create and save a search in Navisw orks is the big idea I wanted to share.
For example, frequently people want to see all the pipes in one spec. Creating a search on the spec and saving it will quickly allow you to locate the items in the entire project.
I hope you take this technique and use it to help you find great stuff!
1. The first step is to create the search. To do this we will use the search palette.
We select the CADWorx category, Line Number, Contains and enter the value we want found in the Value field.
2. Next we save our search. Open the selection sets palette, right-click in a blank area and choose Add Current Search.
3. After that we can click on the search in the palette to select all the items found. Notice that since we are saving a search, every time the model is updated the new results are included.
4. Right click on the selected pipe and choose override color:
5. Pick the color and presto chango!
I realized recently that the search plug-in for our blog wasn’t working well. Ok, it wasn’t working at all. For example, people searched for “ribbon” and no results would display. Last week, I was able to find some other plug-ins that should resolve the issues.
Blog Search box:
Now, a search for “ribbon” will display a list of posts and the ones that reference the ribbon while have the word highlighted like so:
For some reason, posts without the word ribbon display in the results though..I’ll have to try to figure out what is happening there.
The other key search tool to be aware of is on our Resources page shown below. Unfortunately, the downloads we post don’t display in the overall search results so you will need to search here additionally. As a side note, we’ve posted links to the CADWorx Webinars so you guys have access to those as well.
Webinar video links:
