Bulk Properties (aka BulkProps) is a Navisworks Manage plugin that allows bulk creation and modification of user defined tabs and properties.
This plugin was created by me, Shaun Wilson, from Perth, Western Australia. I can be contacted here or via email at [email protected]
Refer to the LICENSE.md file that is included on this website, as part of the source-code files, and as part of the downloadable releases.
Download compiled plugins for the current and previous versions from the Releases page.
The first version of this plugin (v1.0.0) was for Navisworks Manage 2022. Support for older releases is possible, but there is no intention of doing so. Newer releases may be supported on demand.
The code on the master Git branch is the latest - currently v1.0.0 for Navisworks Manage 2022. Older stable versions will have code "archived" in separate branches.
Copy the contents of the zip file to the plugin folder of your Navisworks Manage install, ie C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Navisworks Manage {Version}\Plugins\BulkProps\BulkProps.dll
The plugin has not been tested with Navisworks Simulate.
Plugins do not work with Navisworks Freedom - this is a restriction of Navisworks Freedom, not this plugin.
In Navisworks Manage, there will be tab called "Tool add-ins", and it will have 2 buttons: Bulk Properties Editor and Process Bulk Property Configs.
This is the main interface for managing properties. Here you can configure a property tab, apply the changes, save the config to a file, load a config from file, or load and apply bulk configs.
The screenshot at the top shows a configured tab using many of the features, and the generated property tab can be seen at the bottom of the window.
This selects the source of model items that the plugin will update the properties for. You can select Current Selection to modify the parts currently selected in the model, or choose from a pre-defined Selection Set (which can be Search Sets or Saved Selections). Currently, folders of Selection Sets cannot be used.
Upon selecting a Selection Set, it is translated to a UNC style path. This path can also be entered manually, and is saved/loaded from config files.
This can be used to filter out specific items from the selected Item Source. Bulk Properties will only be applied to items that are enabled here.
Here you can configure the Tab Name of the user-defined tab you wish to alter. This accepts a simple string. This plugin cannot alter tabs that were created when importing files.
You must then choose a Process to apply to the tabs. See the Processes section for explanations of the various options.
The table area is where you setup all the property changes that will be applied by the plugin. You can Add a new property config by pressing the button at the bottom of the table. You can Delete a config by pressing the red X at the end of each row.
Each Property Config has a field for;
- A Name, which is a simple text string.
- A Process to apply to the property - see the Processes section for explanations of the various options.
- A Value, an advanced text string that is able to copy property values from other tabs, which may also be on ancestor items. The following rules apply;
- The plugin will look for instructions in
{ }brackets, of the fromat "TabName.PropertyName". - To select from an ancestor, prefix with as many "..\" as required.
- If you want to use curly-brackets in your value, escape them with another bracket, ie
{{Regular Text In Brackets}}, as per C#.NET string.Format() rules. - An example value is:
This item is {Item.Layer}, and its parent is called {..\Item.Name} - When you run the plugin, if a tab, property, or ancestor cannot be found, this will cause the current process to raise an error, stop, and undo its changes.
- The plugin will look for instructions in
When you have configured all the above, you can press the Process Bulk Property Changes to apply the modifications to the model.
You can Save the current config to file, so that you can re-apply it at a later time. The file is an XML format text file, and nominally has the BPC (BulkPropsConfig) file extension, but you can use TXT or XML file formats too. Refer to the XML File Format section below for a description of the file format. Note that the plugin does not save your "Current Selection" - you will need to save this yourself to a Selection Set.
You can also Load configs from file. This will configure the Editor so that you can manually Process Bulk Property Changes.
Alternatively, you can Process Configs, aka Process Bulk Property Configs - see below.
There are currently 4 process available to both Tabs and Properties. They mimic SQL functions, as described below;
- Upsert will Insert the tab or property if it does not exist, or Update an existing one. Thus, it will always occur.
- Insert will only occur if a tab or property with the same name does not already exist.
- Update will only occur if a tab or property with the same name already exists.
- Delete will remove the tab or property, but can only affect user-defined tabs and their properties (not imported ones).
If a tab or property process cannot be applied because the rules are not met, the plugin will continue without error or warning.
This button allows you to select multiple Bulk Property Config files, and it will then apply them all to the model.
You should save your model before running this command, in case something goes wrong. If the plugin encounters a problem whilst processing one config, it will raise an error telling you which config file failed, then undo all the changes made so far, and stop. If this happens, it is recommended to close the model without saving, and open it again.
Below is the BPC file content that matches the above screenshot.
Note that the XML format requires the characters & < > to be escaped and replaced with & < and >. This is automatically done when saving a config with the Editor, but will need to be manually done if you are generating config files with other methods (ie, automatically from Excel or similar).
<BulkPropertiesConfig>
<ItemsSource>\\Concrete</ItemsSource>
<ItemFilters>
<Files>False</Files>
<Layers>False</Layers>
<Groups>True</Groups>
<Inserts>True</Inserts>
<Geometry>True</Geometry>
</ItemFilters>
<TabConfig>
<Name>My Bulk Data</Name>
<Process>Upsert</Process>
</TabConfig>
<PropertyConfigs>
<PropertyConfig>
<Name>A simple property</Name>
<Process>Upsert</Process>
<Value>Demo Data</Value>
</PropertyConfig>
<PropertyConfig>
<Name>A copied property</Name>
<Process>Upsert</Process>
<Value>The parent is {..\Item.Name}</Value>
</PropertyConfig>
</PropertyConfigs>
</BulkPropertiesConfig>
Whilst using the plugin in accordance with the License, you are able to change the way the plugin works by replacing certain classes. You do this by instantiating the class Processor found within the BulkProps.Process namespace, and using the constructor
Processor(IGetModelItemsForConfig, IProcessTabName, IProcessPropertyName, IProcessPropertyValue)
along with your own implementations of the necessary interface(s).
The functionality of the 4 interfaces are as follows;
This receives the ItemsSource value from the Editor / XML content (when it isn't null or empty), and uses the value to get a selection set. For example, this could be replaced with a class that treats the string as an index path as used by the method Autodesk.Navisworks.Api.DocumentParts.DocumentSelectionSets.ResolveIndexPath.
This receives the TabConfig.Name value from the Editor / XML content (when it isn't null or empty), and uses the value to return formatted strings for the tabs display and internal names. For example, this could be replaced with a class that generates a name based upon another tab or property.
This receives the PropertyConfig.Name value from the Editor / XML content (when it isn't null or empty), and uses the value to return formatted strings for the proprties display and internal names. For example, this could be replaced with a class that generates a name based upon another tab or property.
This receives the PropertyConfig.Value value from the Editor / XML content (including when it is null or empty), and uses the value to return a formatted value. For example, this could be replaced with a class that can use rules to count the amount of child items.
The Debug Build procedure has been configured to write directly into the C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Navisworks Manage {Version}\Plugins\ folder, and then start Navisworks with a demo model from the SDK. You may want to adjust this behaviour to suit your machine (by editing the BulkProps.csproj and BulkProps.csproj.user files, or via the Visual Studio UI options). Alternatively, use the Release Procedure, which simply outputs the plugins files to the local \bin\ folder.
To enable development of the plugin on machines that do not have Navisworks Manage installed, the Solution uses a NuGet package to provide References of the Navisworks Manage API. The actual package used is not a fixed requirement - it just needs to provide the necessary Autodesk.* DLL's. These reference DLL's are NOT copied on Build.
Your Visual Studio environment needs to have the correct .NET Framework installed, as dictacted by the Navisworks Manage API. The current version is 4.8.