Model Report Builder – MIDAS Support

Intro

A model report is a long assembly job before it is an engineering one. Everything that describes the model has to come out of CIVIL NX table by table — the nodes and elements, the materials and the modulus each one actually resolves to, every cross section with its properties and a drawing to scale, every tendon on the elevation it belongs to, the supports, the load cases, the combinations, the construction stages — and then be pasted into a document, laid out, captioned, and brought back into step every time the model moves. The Model Report plugin does that in one pass. It reads the open model over the MIDAS API, you choose which blocks go into the document and in what order, you add your own commentary, tables and images, and it writes the result to HTML, PDF, Word, Excel or CSV. It also runs fourteen quality checks on the model while it is there. Nothing is ever written back to the model.

Developed with

MIDAS CIVIL NX 2026 (v1.0.0)

Benefits of this plugin

Non-mutating by construction — the plugin reads the model with HTTP GET, and the only two POSTs it can make are a result-table query and a request for CIVIL NX to render a picture. There is no PUT or DELETE path in it, the path list is whitelisted in one function, and the argument that would make CIVIL NX write to your disk is stripped from every body. Nothing you do in the report can change the model.
It reads what the model can have, not all 48 tables — an endpoint states what it depends on, and a table whose dependency came back empty is not requested at all: a support needs a node, a beam load needs an element, a combination needs a load case. A model holding nothing but a section library costs 9 requests instead of 48, and the provenance list says not read — no elements in the model rather than not defined, which is a weaker and different claim.
Cross sections drawn to scale, and honest about which are real — a section is rebuilt from the dimensions CIVIL NX carries and the rebuild is checked against the area CIVIL NX published before it is drawn. A shape that cannot reproduce its own area is not presented as a drawing; it is labelled SCHEMATIC on the figure itself, so nothing on a signed check certificate can be mistaken for geometry it is not. Every drawing carries hatching, both axes through the centroid, dimension lines and a scale bar in model units, so it can be measured on paper.
Composite sections reported as two sections, because that is what they are — CIVIL NX publishes a composite girder before and after composite action, and both columns are given: the girder alone, which is what it carries at erection, and the girder with the deck slab acting. The slab's own width, depth and haunch are stated in the section header alongside the depth of the finished deck, and the drawing carries up to five dimensions — the soffit, the overall width, the girder's depth, the finished depth and the slab's depth — each with a witness line back to the feature it measures.
Tendons drawn on the bridge, not in a stub — every cable is placed on an elevation of the girder it belongs to, at its true station and its true height, resolved through the section's offset point rather than its centroid. Group them, or draw one elevation per tendon, with the coordinates in a table beside them.
The figures you have saved in the model come in on their own — CIVIL NX keeps the images a user saves into a model, and every one of them becomes a figure in the report without being asked, in both report types. Nothing to pick, nothing to re-attach when the model changes.
One document, five formats — HTML, PDF, Word, Excel and CSV all walk the same resolved document, so the formats cannot drift apart. A test asserts that all five emit the same blocks in the same order.
Two presets, and then it is yours — Full report puts in everything the model has; Bridge deck report is the deck, its sections and its tendons. Reorder any block, delete any block, add your own headings, commentary, tables and images, and save the layout for the next model.
It fails soft, and says so — a table that could not be read costs that one section of the report and never the run, and the report says on the page what it could not get and why. A report that quietly omits what it could not read is worse than one that tells you.

How to use this plugin?

Open the model in CIVIL NX and start the plugin — the connection details are supplied by the host, so there is nothing to type. The badge in the header reads CIVIL NX connected when the MAPI key has been verified.
Read the model — press Run report. The plugin walks the endpoints it needs, reports what each one returned, and lands on the Model tab with the model's contents: its extents, its materials, its sections, its tendons, its load cases and combinations, and the provenance of every one.

The Model tab after a run — the headline counts, the model's extent, and every table it holds, each with the number of rows read.

Go to the Report builder — the left column lists every block available for this model, including one entry per table the model actually contains. The right column is the report itself, in the order it will be written.
Pick a preset — Full report or Bridge deck report. Both are starting points: every block can be moved with the arrows, hidden with the dot, duplicated or removed. The figures saved in the model are already in, after the model views.
Set the document details — the title, project, job number, revision and the logo for the cover page, and the footer that runs on every page.

The Report builder — available blocks on the left, the report itself on the right in the order it will be written.

Add your own content — headings, paragraphs, tables typed or pasted from Excel, and images. Images are downscaled on insert so the report stays a sensible size, and Capture from CIVIL NX puts the live model view straight in without leaving the plugin.
Check the cross sections and the tendons — each section carries its drawing, its static properties in the grouping an engineer reads them in, and its derived geometry; each tendon group carries its elevation and, if you opt in, the analysed coordinate table.
Build the preview — the preview is produced by the same generator as the HTML export and the printed page, so what you approve is what gets issued.
Export — Print / PDF for the printed document, or All export formats for HTML, a direct PDF, Word, Excel and CSV. Save the layout with Save as… to reuse it on the next model, or Export .json to keep it with the images.

Conclusion

The Model Report plugin removes the slow, mechanical part of issuing a model report: transcribing tables, redrawing sections that CIVIL NX already knows the dimensions of, placing cables on an elevation by hand, and rebuilding all of it whenever the model changes. Read the model, arrange the blocks once, and reissue the whole document in seconds — with the drawings checked against the areas CIVIL NX published, the composite sections reported both before and after the deck acts, and a provenance list that says exactly what was read and what was not. The engineer's time goes on the checking, not on the typing.