Discover the process of manually adding tasks to your Navisworks Timeliner and creating a task hierarchy using selection sets. Uncover how these sets can enhance your efficiency, circumvent repeated multiple item selection, and streamline the creation of a timeline.
Key Insights
- The article provides a step-by-step tutorial on manually adding tasks to the Navisworks Timeliner, and using selection sets to form a task hierarchy. These sets, which can include any type of object, not only facilitate task organization but also make it easier to define and update task hierarchies.
- Navisworks allows users to manually set planned start and end times for tasks. There's an automatic plan start and planned end time feature, but the user can overwrite these dates. Status updates reflect any changes made to these planned dates.
- Navisworks supports exporting schedules externally, specifically in CSV format. This exported schedule can be opened in Excel, imported into project management software like Microsoft Project and Primavera, or used to recreate the schedule in Navisworks by importing it as a data source.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. In this video, we'll be exploring how to manually add tasks to your Navisworks Timeliner and then how to use selection sets to make a task hierarchy. We'll be using the bim361-model.nwf file that's located in your Lesson 5 folder.
Let's first talk a little bit about selection sets. To open up your selection sets, go to the Home tab and then in the Select and Search panel, you'll see a small drop-down menu that says Sets on it. Go to Manage Sets to launch the panel and then turn off auto-hide by pinning the attack into the monitor.
Currently, we have some sets already in our file and essentially sets are saved selections. If you see when you select Walls, you'll see that underneath one of the models, we have a wall selected. Wall and then also in the roof level.
You can set any type of object to a selection set. They don't have to be in categories of doors, floors, other building types of items. But setting a set will help you to not have to select multiple items again once you have all of the items that you want selected in together.
It'll also help you make a timeline or task hierarchy. So let's practice by making a plumbing and a mechanical set. All of our mechanical and plumbing information is located in the model.
Learn CAD
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
And from the selection tree, go ahead and expand all of your levels like I've done and then hold down Control as you select each of the following. Plumbing fixtures on no level. Plumbing fixtures on level one.
And plumbing fixtures on level two. To make a new set, just right click on the Sets panel and then go to Save Selection. I'm going to call this one PLUM for plumbing.
Next, let's select Mechanical Equipment. Right click, Save Selection. Mechanical.
Now we can manually add tasks by hitting the Add Task button and that creates a blank task. We can call this anything we want. For example, if we wanted this to be the mechanical, then we can simply label it as mechanical.
But we can also add a task hierarchy based on the number of sets that we have. If we go over to the right of that Add Task button, there's a button that says Auto Add Tasks. Drop that down and then make one for every set.
You'll see that on the right hand side that Attached is set to specific sets. That means that if we were to update any of these sets, like if for some reason we wanted to add these doors to our window set, then we can select whatever we need to, right click on the window set and hit Update. And now that schedule item in the task hierarchy is set to windows.
Includes the doors that we just added to our windows set. To remove any items from sets that you don't want, hold down control to deselect them and then right click on the set to update. You may have noticed that Navisworks give you an automatic plan start and planned end time.
So to set these fields manually, you'll select each of the cells and then you can drop down a calendar or you can just type in the dates. You'll see that the status still has a gray box, and that's because there's no difference between planned start and actual start, and planned end and actual end. If our actual start takes place later in our planned or actual end, you'll see that your status now changes to reflect the fact that you have a start date that's later than your planned and an end date that's later than your planned.
You can manually set each of your planned start and planned end times. I have included in the lesson 5 folder a pdf that has all of the times. It's a grueling task.
If you don't have an external schedule file, then this is what you'll have to do to get all the information that you need into your model. So go ahead and add all of those planned start and planned end times, making sure your task type is set to construct every time, and then I'm going to skip ahead. Now I have all of my planned start and planned end dates selected.
Next, we just have to go over to configure and make sure that our construct type, which is the task type that we had set, is set to correct start and end appearance. So currently we have model appearance as start. We want this to be green, 90% transparent, and appearance to be model appearance.
That's correct. And then once we have all those set, we can go to simulate and hit the play button. Once your simulation is through, you can go back to any other tab to reset your appearance, and that is how to manually make a schedule.
If you'd like to save the schedule externally, then you can go to the top right hand side of the Timeliner panel, and then select the export schedule, and you can export it to one of two formats. I recommend using CSV, and you can save it as the BIM361 underscore Timeliner.csv, and then if you open it in Excel, then you'll see that schedule that you just made in your Excel program. And this could also be imported into Microsoft Project and to Primavera.
And you can also use the CSV file to recreate your schedule in Navisworks by importing it to a data source. But that concludes this video. I hope you enjoyed this manual entry section.
I'll see you in the next one.