AI clash detection in Navisworks with Navisworks MCP

What you need

Windows and Navisworks Manage 2025, 2026 or 2027 (Navisworks Freedom has no plug-in support), a Google or GitHub account, and an AI assistant: the Claude app or Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Gemini CLI or Cline. Navisworks MCP is free and installs without administrator rights.

Install it from aecomcps.com/navisworks: run Install-Navisworks-MCP.cmd, sign in once, and restart your assistant. Your assistants are connected automatically.

Run the clash tests

Open your NWF or NWD in Navisworks Manage and ask, for example:

• "Run the clash tests and show me the 10 deepest clashes with their grid locations."
• "Create a clash test between the Structure and Mechanical selection sets with 25 mm tolerance and run it."
• "Summarise the new clashes per test and per status."

The assistant uses Navisworks MCP's Clash Detective tools: list, create, edit, run, import and export tests; query results by status and sort them, for example by depth; summarise and group them; and read the rules. Long runs work in the background while you keep working.

Review, assign and comment

Ask the assistant to go through the results with you: open a clash in the viewer, take its image, set its status, assign it, add a comment or group related clashes. With several Navisworks windows open, the assistant asks which one you mean — it never guesses.

• "Group the new clashes in the Mechanical test and assign them to the MEP team."
• "Go to clash 12 and add the comment: duct to be lowered 150 mm."

Check the model against your clash matrix

If your project has a clash matrix — which disciplines are tested against which, with what tolerance — the assistant can read it from Excel (.xlsx), CSV, JSON or XML, check it, create the clash tests it describes, and audit whether the open model's tests still match it. It can also export the existing tests as a matrix (xlsx, csv or json).

• "Audit this NWF against C:\Projects\matrix.xlsx and write the report."

Write the coordination report

Reports are written as interactive HTML (filter cards, search, sortable columns) and Excel by default, or CSV and JSON, with test, status, distance, items, assignee and grid. They go to Documents\MCPs\Navisworks MCP reports on your PC unless you name another folder. They contain project data and stay on your PC.

What it changes, and what it never touches

• Deleting or resetting clash tests, results, sets or viewpoints is always previewed first and needs your yes.
• Each change is one Undo step named "MCP: …", where Navisworks supports undo.
• Source models (RVT, DWG, IFC and others) are never changed — only the Navisworks file.
• A read-only mode lets assistants read but never change anything.

Navisworks 2025 has no clash result priority in its API, so that one field is not available there.

What leaves your PC

The model, its properties and clash results go only to the AI assistant you connected, because it reads the tool results — under that provider's terms. Navisworks MCP's own service receives only AI-learning information with names, paths, GUIDs and values removed, and this can be switched off. See what Revit MCP and Navisworks MCP share.