NavisWorks Collision Detection vs. Clash Detective

Don't be confused or tricked when looking for the correct NavisWorks program that can find interferences between two or more solid objects. NavisWorks comes in 4 flavors; Freedom Viewer, Review, Simulate and Manage. Only Manage comes with Clash Detective, while Review and Simulate and Manage comes with Collision Detection. Don't get the two mixed up, because they do two very different things. It is very deceiving. What is the difference?

Collision Detection
This function defines you as a collision volume in a walkthrough environment that can navigate around and interact with the model, obeying certain physical rules and gravity that confine you within the model itself. In other words, you have a mass and as such, cannot pass through other objects, points or lines in the scene.

You can walk over, or climb over objects in the scene that are up to half the height of the collision volume, thus allowing you to walk up stairs or through a door, but not allowing you to walk through a wall, for example.

Clash Detective
The Clash Detective tool enables effective identification, inspection, and reporting of interference clash in a 3D project model between various 3D solid objects.

Using Clash Detective can help you to reduce the risk of human error during model inspections.
Clash Detective can be used as a one-off 'sanity check' for a completed design work, or it can be used as an ongoing audit check of the project.

You can use Clash Detective to conduct clash tests between traditional 3D geometry (triangles), and laser geometry.

You can combine the Clash Detective functionality with other NavisWorks tools:

• Linking Clash Detective and Object Animation together gives you the ability to automatically check interferences between moving objects. For example, linking a Clash Detective test to an existing animation scene would automatically highlight clashes for both static and moving objects during the animation, e.g. a crane rotating through the top of a building, a delivery lorry colliding with a workgroup, etc.
• Linking Clash Detective and TimeLiner together enables the time-based clash checks on the project.
• Linking Clash Detective, TimeLiner, and Object Animation, together enables clash testing of fully animated TimeLiner schedules.

So if you, or somebody is looking for "Collision Detection" in a software program, make sure you know what that means.