Exploring Timeliner in Navisworks: Simulating Construction Progress

Welcome back to Navisworks. In this video, we'll be talking about Timeliner, and this starts our Timeliner series of videos. We'll also be discussing more specifically how to run a simple simulation within Timeliner.

So let's go ahead and open up a new file. We have not been in this file yet. We're going to find this in Lesson 5 under the Gatehouse folder, and the one you're looking for is gatehouse_timeliner.nwf.

It's a simple model. I think it's a good one to get started with. You'll see that we have the Turntable tool as the default navigation tool, and then open up Timeliner.

You'll find it in the Home tab with all of the other tools. And a quick overview of Timeliner—it's a panel just like all of the other tools. We'll have the first tab on the left-hand side, which shows all of our tasks. Tasks are schedule items, and they're also assigned to individual components within our model.

We have another tab that contains Data Sources, and we'll get into that in a future video. The Data Sources can be project schedules coming from multiple project scheduling software programs. Configure gives us our model appearance—how we'd like our model to appear as it's being constructed, demolished, or represented temporarily with color and transparency. But the one we want to concentrate on in this lesson is the Simulate tab.

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This model has already been set up with tasks, and the only thing we really need to do is make sure that our scrubber—just like in Animator—is set all the way to the beginning. Then we can hit the Play button, and the preset schedule will start to run. We see this model being built, and as it's being built, we can pause it. We'll see that if we pause at any specific point, the percentage of completion for the current item is displayed. If we hit Play again, we'll see that we can navigate in real time through this model.

You can even use the Walk tool if you'd like, and you'll notice how, when things are being constructed, they are transparent green. That's all because of our configuration, where "Construct" is green at 99% transparency. Then, when it's over, it will take on our model appearance. You can step forward one step by hitting Step Forward, or step back one step by hitting Step Backward. You can watch this in Reverse Play, and you can also skip all the way to the end.

As long as you have the Simulate tab active, the model will display all of the elements that are in existence at the point in time where your scrubber is positioned. So this is a true four-dimensional model. If I try to select anything that is not in existence yet, then it won't, of course, exist—so I can't select it.

If you'd like to see the whole model, you can either fast-forward to the end, or you can just go to a different tab, and the simulation will no longer be active. You can control the way that your schedule is viewed by using the Zoom button. You can slide that left and right, and if we go all the way to the beginning, you'll see that the tasks—these bars—are actually associated with the layered tasks that we have set to specific times.

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This is a graphic representation of the model being built, which corresponds directly with our simulation. In the upcoming videos, we'll be talking about how to create a simulation model based on manually assigned tasks. We can create a schedule within this program and then assign our layers.

We'll also be looking at how to create one from a preset schedule, which we'll be importing into Navisworks, and then assigning layers to that preset schedule. And we'll also be looking at how to use Scripter and the Configure tab to make a customized appearance for our model and simulation. But that's a basic overview.

This is what Timeliner can do, and let's get started on exploring what we can do with it in the next videos. Thanks.