Over the years I have often had to manage a large number of files across many projects. This often required the building of federated models or in other words, appending the same files and saving the same models over and over. This is both tedious and error prone and in any case I am sure you have better things to do with your life than mindless clicky work that can much easier be done by a computer.

Scripting in Navisworks is a little known tool that comes pre-packaged with Navisworks and is very useful for managing large numbers of files and sorting them into federated models and sub-models. Here we will cover all the tools required to run model federation with no additional tools needed. The only pre-requisite is a working Navisworks Manage or Simulate installation. Some programming or scripting knowledge is beneficial but not required as everything will be explained in a step-by-step basis with no prior knowledge assumed. We will cover the batch utility, roamer.exe and filetoolstaskrunner.exe as each has specific advantages dependant on the situation at hand.

This is also a good stepping stone towards writing code in a more powerful language such as C#.