User Guide

RealityConnect for NX is designed to bridge the gap between high-fidelity digital twins and your CAD environment. It allows you to stream large-scale reality capture data directly into NX without draining system resources and provides a streamlined interface for asset management.

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Accessing your data

To access your data, you must first establish a connection to Prevu3D.

1. In NX, click the Connect button in the Prevu3D ribbon.
   A web browser will open and redirect you to the Prevu3D authentication page.

2. In your web browser, sign in to your Prevu3D account if required.

3. In the web browser, authorize the plugin to access your organization’s data.

4. Back in NX, the connection dialog opens with your Organization and signed-in account shown in the header. Select:

   • the Division,

   • then the Site that contains the desired RealityTwin.

5. Click Continue to confirm the connection.

6. Once connected, the Display Environment, Manage Assets, and Working Areas buttons become available. An NX part must be open for these actions.

Note

Your session is cached securely on your machine, so you stay signed in between NX sessions and reconnecting no longer reopens the browser. To sign in with a different account or organization, use the Switch button in the connection dialog header.

Connection troubleshooting

RealityConnect validates its secure connections against the Windows certificate store and follows the proxy configuration defined in Windows, so it connects reliably on corporate networks that use a proxy or inspect TLS traffic.

If sign-in cannot be completed, the plugin names the address it could not reach and shows a report you can expand with Details. The report lists every address that was tested with its result, the proxy configuration in use, and the certificate authority presented for the connection. It also includes the list of hosts to allow over HTTPS (port 443), which you can pass on to your IT team.

Tip

The same report is written to the log file, so you can share it even after closing the dialog. See About for the log file location.

Environment Display

The Environment Display tool streams the selected RealityTwin directly into the active 3D view, providing immediate site context for your project.

• Show / hide environment
  Click Display Environment to stream and display the environment in the current view.
  Once active, the button changes to Hide Environment, allowing you to remove the environment overlay with a single click.

• In-memory streaming
  The environment is streamed entirely in memory, without creating or loading files on disk, ensuring fast interaction and minimal impact on system resources.

• View-dependent refinement
  The scene is progressively refined based on the camera position, improving visual quality where it matters while maintaining smooth performance.

For details about rendering options, HLOD behavior, and performance limits, refer to the Environment Settings documentation.

Asset Manager

Click Manage Assets in the Prevu3D ribbon to open the dockable Asset Manager panel. It allows you to browse, manage, and import assets from the selected RealityTwin into your NX model. Assets can be loaded independently of the environment overlay.

Asset operations

• Load Selected
  Load the selected assets into the active NX view.

• Unload Selected
  Remove the selected assets from the scene if they are currently loaded.

• Export as part
  Export the selected assets as NX parts.
  Exported parts are available on the disk next to the current project file.

• Locate
  Move the camera to focus on the selected asset.
  The asset must be loaded in the scene for this action to be available.

Global actions

• Refresh
  Reload the asset list from the RealityTwin to synchronize the panel with the latest data.

• Reset
  Restore the Asset Manager to its default state.

Asset filtering

• Search
  Filter assets by name.

• Status filter
  Filter assets based on their current state.

Operation feedback

• Progress column
  Displays the progress of ongoing operations for each asset.

• Status summary
  Displays the number of available, selected, and loaded assets.

For configuration options such as asset quality, positioning, and import behavior, refer to the Asset Settings documentation.

Working Area

Click Working Areas in the Prevu3D ribbon to open the dockable panel. The tools let you load a focused portion of the RealityTwin geometry as NX bodies, instead of streaming the whole environment. This is useful when working on a specific zone of the site without loading everything into memory.

Creating a working area

Use the Working Areas panel to define and load a working area. Choose the load Quality (Low / Medium / High) before creating.

• From View
  Loads the geometry visible in the current NX view as a working area.

• Place Box / Apply Box
  Click Place Box to insert a translucent 3D box (named “Working Area Bounds”) into the active part. Move and resize it with the standard NX manipulation tools to enclose the region you want, then click Apply Box to load the geometry within those bounds.

Active working areas

Each loaded working area appears in the list under Active Working Areas.

• Quality dropdown - Change the target quality for this working area.

• Reload (↻) - Re-fetch the working area at the currently selected quality.

• Remove (✖) - Delete this working area and remove its bodies from the scene.

• Click a row - Highlights the bodies of that working area in the NX view.

• Double-click a row - Rename the working area.

• Cancel (✖ during loading) - Cancel an in-progress load.

• Clear All - Remove all working areas at once, including any pending box.

Note

Working areas are temporary for the current session. They are not persisted between NX sessions.

Settings

Use the Settings menu to customize the behavior, performance, and appearance of the Prevu3D plugin.
Settings are organized into four main sections: General, Environment, Assets, and Working Area.

General

General settings control the overall behavior and appearance of the plugin.

• Theme
  Select the visual theme of the plugin:

  • Light

  • Dark

• Texture overlay
  When enabled, textures are displayed on the overlay geometry. When disabled, only vertex colors are shown.

Environment

Environment settings control how the RealityTwin is streamed and displayed in the 3D view.

• Triangle Budget
  Sets the target level of geometric detail for the streamed environment.
  Higher values increase visual fidelity but require more system resources (RAM, GPU, and CPU). The default is 10,000,000. If navigation becomes choppy, lower this value.

• System Statistics
  Displays real-time performance indicators, including:

  • Triangle Count

  • Last Frame Time

  These metrics help evaluate whether the current environment settings are appropriate for your hardware and performance expectations.

Assets

Asset settings define how individual objects are loaded and imported into NX.

Asset quality levels

Each asset quality level is defined by a target triangle count, allowing you to balance visual detail and performance.

• Low Quality Triangles
  Sets the maximum number of triangles used for assets loaded at low quality.

• Medium Quality Triangles
  Sets the maximum number of triangles used for assets loaded at medium quality.

• High Quality Triangles
  Sets the maximum number of triangles used for assets loaded at high quality.

Each value can be reset individually to its default.

Default asset behavior

• Default Quality
  Defines the quality level used by default when loading assets.

Working Area

Working area settings define the triangle budget used per quality tier when loading working areas. Higher values produce more geometric detail but take longer to load.

• Low Quality Triangles
  Maximum triangle count used when loading a working area at low quality.

• Medium Quality Triangles
  Maximum triangle count used when loading a working area at medium quality.

• High Quality Triangles
  Maximum triangle count used when loading a working area at high quality.

Each value can be reset individually to its default.

About

Click About in the Prevu3D ribbon to open a dialog showing:

• the installed plugin version,

• a link to the User Guide,

• a link to the Prevu3D Privacy Policy,

• the Log file of the current session.

Click the log file path to open its folder in File Explorer with the file selected. The plugin writes one log file per NX session in %APPDATA%\Prevu3D\RealityConnectNx\Logs and keeps the five most recent ones, so the log of an earlier session is still available when you report an issue.