4D Simulation

The most interdisciplinary deliverable to come out of our VDC capstone was the 4D simulation. This uses task durations collected from our estimation activities determined from RS Means, our fully federated coordination models exported from Revit to Navisworks as an .nwc file, and of course, our construction schedule, broken-down according to our Uniformat modeling scope.

The most difficult aspect of adjusting and refining our 3D schedule was the communication procedures between Olga, our Project Scheduler and myself. Navisworks lacks the collaborative infrastructure Revit possesses, and simply sending the .nwf file breaks the link between the selection sets and their respective Timeliner tasks. This required me to send Olga an .nwd copy of the file that she can strictly use as a means to view the Timeliner and simulation, and any adjustments she makes must be made in the MS Project construction schedule. She than sends me this updated file that I can then re-sync into the Timeliner as the data source. This process continued until all of our scheduling errors had been completely resolved.

I discovered that TwinMotion has a "phasing" feature that can also be utilized to reconstruct our 4D schedule in even greater resolution complete with animations and camera fly-throughs. I would have loved to experiment with this tool considering the lengths our team had gone through just to export our 4D simulation to mp4 format properly.