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Tips & Tricks
This article will cover some great Verity tips from users that ClearEdge3D would like to share. These Verity tips and tricks might help you if you’re trying to figure out where to start. Also, there are Verity training videos posted on the ClearEdge3D website and YouTube channel!
Hotkeys: We have hotkeys in Verity for most of the major functions. Be aware that hotkeys won’t activate if you’ve switched focus back to Navisworks, are moving geometry in the Orthographic camera setting, or are editing one of the cells in the Verity item table.
- “Import Selection from Host” – S
- “Export Selection to Host” – N
- “Explode” – E
- “Remove from Verity” – DELETE
- “Export Verity Properties to Host” – P
- “Move Host Item to As-Built” – B
- “Measure” – M
- “Accept Current Status” – A
- “Reset Fit” – R
- “Refit” – F
- “In-table multi-select” – CTRL/SHIFT
Additionally, there are hotkeys to constrain movement when editing an item’s fit to the point cloud:
- Rotate element – hold SHIFT (before clicking the element to edit)
- Move element orthogonally- CTRL (any time during a move)
Verity Tip 1: Verity uses computer vision algorithms to classify and fit data to point clouds, and those are not correct 100% of the time. One of the most important Verity tips is that Verity should be used as a tool to substantially accelerate a human operator’s ability to QA installation of work, NOT as a replacement for that human. Users should manually inspect at each item – both to review Verity’s attempt at automatically identifying and fitting the elements, and to determine if any elements require subsequent action to correct. ClearEdge3D is here to make you more efficient and effective so that you can check 100% of your work in the time it used to take you to spot check the same work.
Verity Tip 2: Since you should look at each element, be judicious about what you add to Verity and analyze. The QA process is mostly linear, so validating 1000 items takes 10 times as long as validating 100.
Examples we’ve learned from our users include the following:
- Only add pipes into Verity and exclude (or remove) fittings. If the pipes are correct, the elbows and fittings are correct as well. If a pipe is wrong, so is the fitting.
- Window selecting in Autodesk® Navisworks® risks bringing in a lot of small items you don’t need to analyze. Sort by geometry surface area and remove all the bolts/plates/fittings/etc.
- Selection sets and search sets can really help streamline bringing in just the items you care about analyzing and none of the ones you don’t.
Verity Tip 3: Verity does not need a high density of points to find and fit the geometry to the scan data accurately. When exporting structured data for use in Verity, users usually find decimation of the data has no negative impacts on the results for most items. If you are trying to analyze very small items (an inch or less across) or items a long distance from the scanner (100s of feet), then leave the data at full resolution. If you are capturing data specifically for use in Verity, run at faster, lower resolution settings, and scan from more locations. Exporting at full resolution is also helpful.
Verity Tip 4: If the modeled geometry and the installed work are not a close geometric match, the Verity algorithms are going to be much less effective. Manual review can still yield great results in these cases since Verity breaks the scan’s data and objects out for visual inspection, and will calculate translation variances based on manually adjusting the as-build geometry. Or, if you have access to modeling tools, think about modeling things differently for analysis in Verity. Moving monolithic floor slabs into place will not give you good information on slab edges. However, quickly modeling small slab edge elements in an authoring application can provide you with geometry to fit the points that will give you the results you want.
Verity Tip 5: Similar to many reality capture workflows, the surface quality of the elements you are scanning has a big impact on the analysis results. Highly reflective and highly non-reflective surfaces are much harder to work with, although if you have these kinds of elements, be sure to check the “Indoor Project” option in the Analysis settings to get better results.