Linking Excel Data Into Navisworks – Part 4 Connecting Excel to Navisworks

This is the last stop on our journey. We have made selection sets in Navisworks, exported a custom list of data to a .CSV file, opened that file and added more data in Excel, and now it’s time to get that new data to connect up to our items in Navisworks.

We need to get a little technical here. To accomplish this connection, Navisworks relies on your Windows’ PC ODBC connection drivers. This is how Windows manages what databases can be opened, and in this case we will be telling Navisworks that our Excel file is a database.

There is no one size fits all solution, but this step is usually the bumpiest. There are different versions of Windows, and different installers for the ODBC connectors out there, so I cannot tell you how to make sure you have the right one. A couple quick tips:

  • Be sure that if you use the 32-bit version of office, you use the 32-bit version of the ODBC driver.
  • Be sure that if you use the 64-bit version of Office, you use the 64-bit version of the ODBC…

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