Discover the process of attaching an external schedule to a 3D model in Navisworks. Learn how to use an externally created schedule, from programs like Primavera or Microsoft Project, and integrate it with the Navisworks platform to streamline the task management of your project.
Key Insights
- The Navisworks platform allows for the integration of external schedules. These can be exported from external programs such as Primavera or Microsoft Project into either CSV or their native formats.
- Upon selecting an external file to attach to the model, the user needs to specify which fields from the Navisworks file should be attached to the external fields. Particular focus should be on planned start date, planned end date, actual start, and actual end.
- Once the integration is complete, a task hierarchy can be rebuilt. If the item names in the schedule correspond to the layers in the model, tasks can be auto-added for every topmost layer. This helps to efficiently manage tasks and visualize the project timeline.
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Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. In this video we'll be continuing with Timeliner and we'll be discussing how to attach a schedule coming from an external program. We'll be using the gatehouse.nwd model in your gatehouse folder which is located underneath lesson 5. This gatehouse doesn't have any tasks assigned, it has no data sources, it is essentially a 3D model.
If you use an external program like Primavera or Microsoft Project or any other programs to make your schedule, then you can export them either to a CSV file or in the case of Primavera p3 and p6 you can leave them in their native formats and the same goes with Microsoft Project mpx. To attach an external file you just go to the data sources tab, select add, and then here are your choices of file formats. We're going to practice on a Microsoft Project mpx file and that file is located within the gatehouse folder.
You'll see the only one marked mpx is called gatehouse-underlined-timeliner. Let's open that file. Whenever you select a file to attach to your model it'll ask you which of the fields from the Navisworks file, which are located on the left hand side, do you want to attach to your external field.
In our case we really want to concentrate on the planned start date, planned end date, actual start, and actual end. So the way that you set up your scheduling software is to have some kind of label that is similar to what you want Navisworks to tie to. For this example we have a planned start date and in the external project, the mpx, we have a planned start.
So let's link those two fields together. Do the same thing with planned end. We have it labeled as planned finish and then actual start and actual end will be planned or actual finish.
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Now Navisworks will know where to find the planned start information and planned end and all of the other start information. You'll see once you hit okay that you have a data source and it tells you what type it is and it tells you its location. Your location will vary from mine.
And then to tie into your project you'll right click on the new data source and then go to rebuild task hierarchy. You may get some errors that there are some fields that are missing, that should be okay. You may have more information in your external file than you have to use in Navisworks.
And when you rebuild the hierarchy that places this list of data into your task list. So on the left hand side we have all of our tasks and on the right hand side we have a schedule, a graphic schedule. Currently we have no geometry attached to these tasks, we just have the tasks themselves.
Now the way that gatehouse.nwd is organized, the layers correspond with the items in our project scheduler. And it makes it very easy if you have items in the model corresponding with item names in the schedule because you can just right click on the data source and then go down to auto add tasks for every topmost layer. And what that does is to look at the topmost layer which is the first layer underneath the gatehouse.nwd and then to look at each of the titles of our ids or names.
And if those names match then it will assign the layer with the task. If you scroll down this list now you'll see that some of these task entries have planned start and planned end dates. And then you'll see on the schedule that we have some tasks happening, in this case week 25 and week 26.
But you'll see if you scroll up then it goes all the way back to week 0. You should also note that we don't have any actual starts and actual ends in our schedule so our status bar is set to gray. You'll see this change if we have a difference between planned start and actual start, planned end and actual end. Let's go over to simulate and press play.
And you'll see that each of the items that we have attached to the tasks are now popping in like we have configured. And if you run your simulation all the way to the end you will have a complete model in model appearance.