The Ultimate Guide to Turn Navisworks Files into SimReady USD Content

This guide is part of the RapidPipeline 3D Formats Knowledge Database.

Autodesk Navisworks is a 3D design review package for architecture, engineering, and construction industries. It allows users to open and combine multiple 3D models from different CAD systems, navigate around them in real-time, perform clash detection, create 4D simulations, and coordinate multidisciplinary projects within a single federated model environment. It is a file format mostly used for 3D design review and project coordination software for BIM model visualization, clash detection, and construction planning.

USD (Universal Scene Description) is the primary format to generate SimReady data, enabling 3D assets to be used in simulation environments such as NVIDIA Omniverse, PhysX, and more. For this to work properly, USD assets must adhere to the USD standard, and ideally bring metadata that helps to inform downstream simulation use cases about various simulation-relevant properties of the 3D asset.

There are various ways to generate USD files, but especially when starting from non-simulation formats like Navisworks, it is not easy to perform a good conversion. Additional required steps might include material assignment (in case realistic materials are desired) and related steps like UV generation, but also metadata transfer from the original file to the final SimReady USD asset.

With RapidPipeline, the process of generating NVIDIA SimReady USD content from Navisworks files is easy:

1. Download RapidPipeline Twin Studio, or one of the RapidPipeline 3D tool plugins (free trial available). Alternatively, you can also use RapidPipeline directly in the browser.
2. Perform the conversion from Navisworks to USD. Store or download the resulting USD file, it's ready to use!
3. If you'd like to scale up the process, simply get in touch to acquire a license for the RapidPipeline 3D Processor, running as powerful batch processing tool that turns your entire library of Navisworks files (or other files) into SimReady USD content.

Here is the link for more details.

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