How to export Navisworks properties to Excel

Metriq MTO · Published 24 Oct 2026 · Updated 24 Oct 2026

Which route fits

Use the first when you want to see what the model carries, or need a handful of properties in a sheet. Use the second when the firm already has a Quantification template for the kind of model you received. Menu names move between Navisworks releases, so treat the steps below as a route rather than a script.

Route 1: the Selection Inspector to CSV

Autodesk describes the Selection Inspector as a dockable window that lists the selected objects and the Quick Properties associated with them. Every object visible in it can be exported to a CSV file, and an object you want left out has to be deselected first. The columns are the properties you add, so the work is in choosing them.

1. Inspect one object of each type. Note the category and the name of each property you need. On a Plant 3D model the piping properties sit under the AutoCAD category; on Revit-sourced objects, under Element.
2. Add those properties as columns. In Navisworks Manage 2027 this sits in the Selection Inspector itself, under Quick Properties and Manage Sets. Autodesk’s 2026 help describes the same thing as a property set made from Home › Display › Property Sets, while the 2025 help still sends you to Quick Properties definitions in the Options Editor. Pick each property by its name, not by its position in the list.
3. Select by property, not by eye. Build the selection with Find Items and Find All, rather than by clicking nodes at the top of the Selection Tree, so every row is one part.
4. Export. The Selection Inspector’s export button writes the selection to a CSV file. Open it in Excel and keep that sheet untouched; do the sorting and totals on a copy.

The exact steps, with the two things that catch people out, are in how to check a pipe’s length properties. For one search per fitting type, see counting fittings and valves step by step.

Route 2: the Quantification workbook to Excel

Autodesk documents Quantification for Navisworks Manage and Simulate users. Its own workflow runs to eleven steps, and the last is to output the take-off data to Excel XLSX format. In the 2026 help the export itself is short: in the Quantification Workbook, click the button for importing and exporting catalogues and quantities, choose Export Quantities to Excel from its list, and save the file.

What arrives is the take-off you built, not every property of the model. Quantification maps each item type to a default property and measures that: a linear item reads Length unless you map it to something else. So the file holds the catalogue items you created and the quantities measured for them. A pipe whose length was published under a name the mapping does not read comes out as zero; the zero-length guide walks through the fix. The catalogue, the mapping and the WBS are the set-up that takes the days, and the piping take-off guide sets out where that time goes.

Make the export repeat on the next revision

A selection set keeps the same objects. A search set keeps the search criteria instead, so Autodesk notes it can be run again as the model changes, and search sets can be exported and shared with other users. That makes the search set, not the spreadsheet, the thing to keep. The Selection Inspector can show a search set directly, so the export is a matter of choosing the set and pressing export again.

• One search set per object type: pipe, elbows, tees, reducers, flanges, valves.
• The same property set on every export, so the columns line up between revisions.
• A fresh export for each revision, next to the last one, never over it. Check that the saved search sets still find the same items in the new file, and rebuild them if they do not.

With two exports side by side, compare them by line and size rather than by grand total: comparing quantities between model revisions covers the traps that fake a change.

What a raw property export lacks for pricing

A property export is the model’s data as the authoring tool wrote it. Before an estimator can price from it, these gaps have to be closed:

• Rows are objects, not lines. Autodesk’s reference for the Selection Inspector lists composite objects: one CAD object shown as a group of geometry items. Select at the wrong level and one part becomes several rows. A take-off needs one row per line, item and size, so the CSV has to be pivoted by line number, which only works if the model publishes one.
• Sizes arrive as the model wrote them. A bare “40” can be a bore, a schedule or a pressure class, and a reducer with one size cannot be ordered. See nominal size in the glossary.
• Units need checking. Confirm the unit of every length column before you total it; a sheet that mixes millimetres and metres totals without an error.
• Zero and blank lengths. A pipe with no published length is unmeasured, not zero metres. List it separately; the zero-length guide explains what to ask the modeller for.
• Copies. A source model appended twice to the federation exports twice, and nothing in the sheet says so. See how to find duplicates by hand.
• Leftovers. Objects that none of your searches matched are missing from the file without a trace. Select the piping that no set picked up and list it.

The finished sheet should look like a line-based MTO: pipe in metres, everything else counted, two sizes on reducing items. The piping MTO Excel template shows those columns, and the output contract explains why each unit is what it is.

When a take-off tool fits better

If you need a few properties from one model, export them. If every bid brings a new model family and what you need at the end is a priced piping take-off, the property sets, searches, pivots and checks above are repeated on every job. That is the case Metriq MTO is built for. It takes the NWD as it is and returns a line-based piping MTO in Excel, with pipe in metres or feet and fittings and valves in each, plus a PDF report you can send with the bid. Exact copies of the same object are counted once, and items the model cannot evidence are listed rather than invented. It does not export arbitrary properties: for anything other than a piping MTO, the two routes above are the ones to use.

Download the full workbook and report from the sample take-off, read what goes in and what comes out on the piping MTO software page, or see Navisworks Quantification compared with Metriq MTO.

Questions estimators ask

Sources

1. Selection Inspector window (Autodesk Navisworks help)
2. Reference for the Selection Inspector window (Autodesk Navisworks help)
3. Work with Quick Properties (Autodesk Navisworks help)
4. Work with Quick Properties (2025 release) (Autodesk Navisworks help)
5. Create and use sets of objects (Autodesk Navisworks help)
6. Navisworks Quantification user guide (Autodesk Navisworks help)
7. Quantification workflow (Autodesk Navisworks help)
8. Export data (Quantification) (Autodesk Navisworks help)
9. Quantification workbook (Autodesk Navisworks help)
10. About takeoff property mapping (Autodesk Navisworks help)

Links checked in October 2026. Menu names and pages can move between releases.