I am evaluating an upgrade to Rhino 6 for my team (Marine Designers) and I am finding that V6 doesn’t appear to be compatible with Navisworks Simulate 2016.
I couldn’t find anything on the Autodesk site or elsewhere online, does anyone have experience with whether the newer versions of Navis are compatible with Rhino 6?
Unfortunately this could be a deal breaker for the upgrade, as combining files in Navis has become a key part of our workflow since Rhino import became an option.
Thanks!
No V5 plug-in will work in V6. There are a few exceptions to this but no “major” plug-in is compatible with multiple versions.
Each version of an application that supports plug-in tools (like Rhino), has a version specific Software Development Kit for that version.
All plug-ins for that version need to be built using the version specific SDK.
Please contact the Navisworks developers to see what their plans are for a Rhino V6 version of their tools.
Thanks for the quick response, understood regarding the version change. I asked the question on the Navisworks forum as well and will update this post if I get solid information. I was just wondering if anyone here had any first hand knowledge.
Thanks.
As an update, the text below is the response I got from Autodesk support regarding their plans to bring AutoCAD and Navisworks into compatibility with Rhino 6:
Compatibility with the latest Rhino 6 release would need to be developed by one of the internal teams within Autodesk. Once that service has been updated to handle Rhino 6 format, the rest of the Autodesk products can use it to support. At this time Navisworks will only support up to Rhino 5.0. There is no current ETA on when it would be able to support Rhino 6 format.
I’m kind of surprised that this wasn’t on Autodesk’s radar at all (they asked me to send a sample file!) as I would have expected that McNeel would have at least given them a heads up at some point during the years of development of V6. Anyway, I’m going to have to wait until this is sorted before upgrading my 20 seats of Rhino…
Curious how were you exporting to Navisworks in version V5? Navisworks should be able to read a 3D dwg file which Rhino can export to.
Navisworks can directly open .3dm files (V5).
Humm What version are you using of Navisworks, because i don’t see an open setting for .3dm files and navisworks website doesn’t show it can. It actually states to export to a dwg file.
Navisworks Simulate 2016.
Edit: I think 2016 was the first version to offer direct 3dm support so maybe their website is out of date…
Hi Craig,
Have you heard anything about this issue from Autodesk and/or McNeel?
We have also 20 seats of Rhino which we want to upgrade to Rhino 6.
For our current project we use Navisworks Simulate 2016, because this project is in ShipConstructor 2017 R2.1 and AutoCAD 2016. The next project will be done in ShipConstructor2019 and AutoCAD 2018 and Navisworks Simulate 2018. We start each project in Concept/Design stage in Rhino and want to move to Rhino 6, because this vesrion has lots of useful features. But I see still no support for Rhino 6 .3dm files in Navisworks Simulate 2018/2019.
If new file-features isn’t one of the features you need fromRhino 6, then you can always save to R5 file format from Rhino 6.
// Rolf
No update from Autodesk on this yet. I suspect it will take a while, as I don’t get the impression that McNeel and Autodesk are communicating or working together on this at all.
Our workflow is very similar to what you describe (still SC2017/ACAD2017) and we are just planning to have the team back-save the files to V5 for inclusion in the Navis model. This will add a QC step of confirming that all the files are appearing in the model when it is refreshed.
I will post here again if I hear anything.
