Secrets Revealed for Construction Simulation in Navisworks Manage

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: So you all-- oh, you've got one right there. OK, perfect. So we've got one more. If someone wants a computer to themselves, they can move over to that, unless this nice young lady steals it. Mad dash. Come on, who's going to win? Who's going to win? All right, so do we have any other empty computers? So if you're coming in now, you're getting a computer next to someone. You can arm wrestle them for the rights to the mouse. OK, we are right at the top of the hour. Go ahead and come on in if you're coming in.

Welcome, everyone. My name's Michelle Rasmussen. I am with Assent. So I write the training guides for a lot of the software that you use, specifically on the Civil 3D side of the house, or the infrastructure side of the house. So I've written the Navisworks book, Civil 3D books, BIM 360, getting that out now. So a few books. And if you don't get any penalties today, you have a chance to win one of my books. So you ready for that? All right, come on in. Grab a seat. If you're just now coming in, you've got to share a computer. You don't need it? Star student. Wait, were you the one that said you were hung over? No, you were.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: You do? All right.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: Well, I hope that we're going to all have fun today. My biggest goal today is to make sure you learn at least one thing. Just a raise of hands. How many Revit users do I have again? Holy moly. Full house. How many Civil 3D users? OK, we're getting a little bit more on our numbers, right? All right, how many have used Navisworks before? How many have done construction simulation in Navisworks before? Whoa, what are you guys doing here? You could be learning something else. No, just kidding. No, I think you'll have a lot of fun. Let's go ahead and-- it's not working. Let me try this again up here. There we go. Let's see if that'll work now. OK, there we go.

OK, so I have been using AutoCAD since release nine, and I have over 20 years of experience working in the industry. Started out in the military doing civil engineering for the Air Force. So like I was saying, I have written a few books. Actually, over 50, if you can believe it. About 14 a year for the last several years. Yes, that's a little more than a book a month. It's morning. Yeah, so if you have any of my books and you want to come up and give me feedback, I always am looking to improve them. So definitely give me that feedback.

Since this is a lab, you are going to be using the software, and we have lab assistants. You can see up on the screen here. All my lab assistants, give everyone a wave. We've got Nancy and Dawn from Autodesk. Karl Storm's from Imagine It, and Martha, actually, works with me, and she helped me write the Navisworks books that you have an opportunity to win today. So she is the Revit expert, and I am the infrastructure expert. So a little bit of orders of business before we get started. One of my lab assistants, hold up one of your flags.

OK, we are going to have some fun today. These are penalty flags. When I am talking, your hand should not be touching that mouse because if you're touching the mouse, and you're trying to follow along with me, you're not going to catch everything I say. And so to make sure that you learn at the optimal level, your hand should not be touching the mouse. And if one of my lab assistant's see you doing that, they're going to give you a penalty flag. That's going to disqualify you for winning the book. Uh oh, but it is a little treat. It's some honey from Utah. It's raw, organic honey. There's just little honey sticks, and there's a card that will allow you to get a discount on the book if you decide you want to purchase that later on.

So you'll know when it's your time to actually touch the mouse when you see a slide like this because it's going to tell you where in the handout to turn to follow the steps, step by step, to finish what I had just shown you. So you do need the handouts. If you didn't print them out, that's great because you're not wasting trees, but you do want to make sure you open it up on your device, whether you have an iPad, or a phone, or whatever device you're using. Open that up. If you haven't learned how to open those up yet, go into your AU app, click on the class title, and scroll all the way to the bottom. And the handouts and the PowerPoints are both linked in there. You just open that up. It's going to show it in a PDF format, and you'll be able to follow along. If you don't have one, hopefully the neighbor next to you has one, and maybe you guys can share.

So let's get started. A little bit about the course. We are going to use Navisworks to better predict our project outcomes by reducing conflicts and reducing changes. We are going to be learning some tips and tricks. Actually, secrets. Hopefully, they're secrets that I'm revealing. I'm sure some of you might know some of them since you have used Revit and you've used the Navisworks a bit. But hopefully, you learn at least one thing new. Specifically, what we're going to be doing is we are going to be opening up Revit, which is already open on your machines.

For the first exercise, we'll be setting Revit up for TimeLiner. We're going to do the same thing for our Civil files. So if you've never touched Revit or Civil 3D, either one, it's OK. Like I said, the steps are step by step in the handout, and I'm very confident that you'll be able to follow them. Then we're going to consolidate those models once we have our Revit model prepared and our Civil 3D model prepared. We're going to combine those together inside of Navisworks, along with an Inventor file. So there's a lot of different file types we can bring in. We're going to bring those all in together.

And finally, we're going to simulate the construction of the building and the roads that come from Civil 3D and Revit. We're going to do that using TimeLiner, and combining that with Animator. Now, a little disclaimer. You're not learning how to use Animator today. That would be a whole other two or three hour class. So we're just focusing on TimeLiner, but I have an Animator already prepared so that you can see how you connect TimeLiner and Animator together. All right, let me play this video for you.

This is basically what we're going to do. This is the site that we are going to be working on. And you can see, here's our existing ground surface. It's going to come, disappear, our finished ground is coming in, now our building. There's our floors, there's our walls. In a moment, our windows will come in, our roads. We've got the base surface, the sidewalks, curbs, and gutters. And finally, at the end it'll, bring in our park strip. So what do you think? You think that's going to-- is that something that you guys were all hoping to see? You're going to be able to do exactly that. I guess it just doesn't like to advance when there's a video on there.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: What's that?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: That's right. All right, so our general steps-- what we're going to do. We're going to prepare those models, and create the save and search sets. This is going to save you time. People think, oh, when I create my save and search set, that takes so much time. But I guarantee you, it's going to save you time in the end, and that's what it's all about, is saving you time, saving you money. The next thing we'll do is add some tasks to the Gantt chart, and we'll do it in a couple of different ways so you get to experience both.

We'll configure the objects on how they display. I don't know if you noticed in that video, my existing ground started out as pink, and went to-- no, it started out as the regular model. It went to pink, and then disappeared. We can set that up to however-- make a view however we want. So we're going to learn how to configure that. We'll link the simulation to any previously created animations. Again, previously created is the key there. And we'll play that simulation, and make any necessary changes. So the first thing we need to do is we need to prepare the Revit model. To do that, what we're doing is-- someone tell me, when you build a wall in Revit, what does that build? What's in there?

AUDIENCE: Nothing or everything.

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: Nothing or everything. Explain yourself a little better.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] just one thing, and that's all it is. Or you can build each individual layer like a real wall's built.

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: Yeah. So when you build a wall, it can have your drywall, it can have your framing, and insulation, and your plywood, and your brick. It can all be detailed in there. That's what your wall families are all about. And when we take that over into Navisworks, if that wall is all one component, we're not going to see a real construction simulation because does that wall come in as all one piece when you're building it? No, we start out with the framing.

Well, actually, first off, we start off with the base, whether it be a concrete slab or the foundation, whatever you're starting with, and then you'll bring in your framing, and get that all done. Then you might start bringing in the plywood, building up the outside. Then take it inside, and so on. So we need to actually make sure that we separate our walls out into separate parts. So we're going to do that. Now, the other thing that we need to do, I'll show you that in just a moment. The other thing we need to do is we need to create a base point for the project.

So how many in here, using Revit, actually go in and setup a project base point in Revit when you're working? A few of you. Good. That's great. I love that practice. For those of you that don't, you're probably working close to zero zero, and building your building from there. What happens when you take this into Navisworks, it's not going to ask you for an insertion point. It's not going to ask you for the scale factor or the rotation factor. It's going to put it in there.

Now, I'm going to show you how to rotate those and fix it later, but you need to set that project point so that it will line up with that Civil 3D model. Because when us Civil folks are working, we work in real world coordinates. We go out and we do a survey, and we know the northings and eastings. If our northings and eastings are up in the seven millions, which is very likely in Utah, that building is going to go way down to zero. And when you zoom expands, you're not going to be seeing any of your project because it'll be zoomed out too far. So we're going to learn how to do that.

So it's a very simple process to separate those objects. These are the steps. It's a very simple thing. I'm going to show you that in the software, and to do that, I have to get out of my slides, otherwise you don't see my Revit for some reason. Whoops, that's Civil. All right, so here's our project. This is a building model that Martha had created. She's written this up in one of our Revit books, and I borrowed it. And basically, when I select one of my walls-- and by the way, when you do this yourselves, a quick easy way to select one of the walls is to go to the corner. If I select in the center, sometimes it doesn't quite know what I'm selecting. So the corner is the secret there.

So I'm going to select that wall. And if I want to select all my walls at once, I'm just going to right-click, and go to Select All Instances, and I can grab them all in the entire project. So all the walls that match that type of wall that I selected became selected. You can see this one didn't get selected because it's not the same type of wall. But as soon as I selected that wall, you noticed I got a modify walls contextual tab at the top. Well, on the Create tab, I can select or click on Create parts. So I click on that. It's going to separate all those walls into separate components.

Now, you are going to get this warning dialog box. It's just saying, hey, the join condition, it didn't know how to handle those corners. That's OK because in the construction simulation, you just want to see everything come in separately. We're going to ignore that, and we're just going to say OK to that warning. All right, now, the next thing that we need to do-- I'm going to hit Escape. The next thing we need to do inside of Revit is set that base point. And to do that, we're going to go to the Manage tab under the Project location panel. I'll set the coordinates, and I'm just going to expand that.

So I can specify the coordinates at a specific point, that way the surveyor can tell you-- this is where communication comes in. Communication is huge, right? You talk to the surveyor, and you say, hey, where's that building point? What's the coordinates of that building point? And they're going to tell you. And so I'm going to pick the corner that they told me. They said oh, this corner right here. We've staked it out. That's at this northing, and easting, and elevation. You have to have that elevation so that comes up at the right elevation. Now, this project is a project that is based out of Utah, and so that's why we've got the 4617 as the elevation.

So it's that easy. When you actually open your files, you'll notice that that northing and easting is closer to zero. You're going to fix that. Any questions on setting the base point or separating out parts into elements? OK. OK, so here's a little secret revealed. When I was selecting that wall, you'll notice that I right-clicked and selected all the instances similar to it. Well, if you, as you're designing in Revit, if you save sets, which you do by just coming up here and clicking the Save right at the top.

When you're in modify wall selection, you click Save. You can save a bunch of saves sets, and then you can just go select that save set. It will open up. It will select everything that you're trying to separate out, whether it's floors, ceilings, roof, whatever. So it's really easy to do. So I've already just shown you how to set the base point. It's your turn. Now you can actually touch your mice. Go ahead and turn to page four in your handout, and follow the steps in that first exercise. And if you have questions, raise your hand. One of the lab assistants will come along and help you out. But if you have your hand out, it should be very straightforward.

OK, does anyone need more time? Raise your hand if you need to spend more time on that. Nobody needs more time? Come on in. Come on in. We've got seats. Grab a seat anywhere. So you set your base point. You've separated out your parts. We're ready to move on to the next piece. So all eyes are up on me. Now we need to go into Civil 3D, and prepare our model for Civil 3D.

To do that, it's very similar. I'm not going to play this video because it's a pain to go up and back, but this was just simulating bringing in all of our different pieces. First, you grade the ground, then you bring in your forms, form it up, bring in the concrete, set your curb and gutter. There's a lot of things that go into that. So if I were to look at this in the steps it would be done in the field, you grate out your datum surface, you bring in your sub base and your base materials for that road, set your curb and gutter.

And this might be, depending on what material you're working with, if you're working with asphalt, you set your curb and gutter first. If you're working with concrete, you might set the concrete road first, and bring the curb and gutter into it later. And then maybe you go in and build up that traffic control before you create your sidewalks. And finally, put the pavement down or the concrete down. Now, for those of you that use Civil 3D, what makes up our road? Tell me a little bit about the corridor model.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] point codes.

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: Point codes. Yes. So is it all one piece, though? When we select that road, it is all one piece. When we select that corridor model, it's all one unit, right? So we need to separate the pieces out. Luckily-- wearing course and vegetation, there we go. Luckily, that corridor model was built with an assembly, and you start out piecing it together. Then you build the corridor, and it acts all as one item. We need to make sure that we take it back to separate it out. So we're going to learn how to do that in Civil 3D.

Now, these are the steps. You can see, not too hard. Six easy steps. There is a tip, though. Here's our next secret revealed. When I create my corridor solids, I want to make sure that my layers that it separates out into, match 100% my task list in the project management software. So I'm going to show you how to make sure that happens. The first thing is right up here in the extract corridor solids dialog box, we need to set up that layer name template. And again, this is where communication comes in. You need to communicate with your project manager how they want the items named. And that way you can set that template up so that it names them the correct way.

I like it to say region. The region that it is and then the material that it is. That way, I can have it separate out into different pieces. So if it's a really long corridor, I'm not going to be able to put all the asphalt in in one day, am I? No. They'll probably do it in sections, and they might do one lane, and then come in the next day and do the next lane. So having them separate out into regions, and then the materials, you'll be able to do that. Now, the other secret here is when I create those solids, I don't save them. I don't create them in my file that I'm working in-- my site plan.

I tell it to separate them out into another drawing file. And the reason is it's going to create just those layers, like we see over here. Those are the only layers that'll be in there, along with layer zero, because that's always in there. So then I can just go in and select all my layers, copy them out, and paste them into my project management software. I didn't make any human errors. I just copied exactly what was there. Everything's going to match perfectly. Easy peasy. Don't touch it yet. Don't touch it yet. All right, let me show it to you in the software. I'm going to go over to Civil 3D this time.

You can see, here's my corridor. This is the corridor we're working with. We actually have a couple of corridors. So you might have to do this a couple of times, if you a couple. As soon as I select that corridor model, it gives me the contextual tab at the top. And you'll notice on the corridor tools tab panel, you can extract the corridor solid. So I'm going to click that. It's going to ask me to select the region of solids. Now, I have three options. I can it by a station range, if I'm only going to do part of the road. I can do it within a certain area by polygon, and I can-- uh oh, we've got a penalty. What happens when your team gets a penalty?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: Do you boo? No, I'm just kidding. So we've got a penalty. You've disqualified yourself, but you can get a copy of that book later. All right, so the last one is you can set all the regions all at once. I'm going to do it all at once because I like to do things fast and easy. So I'm going to do that. It's going to bring up this corridor solids dialog box, and I'm going to scroll all the way up to the top, and set up that layer template. So I'm going to click in the first box, and tell it exactly what I want. I'm going to do mine by the region name. That's going to set that up automatically. So it has the beginning and end all together. And I'll click Insert so that it inserts it down in here in the name.

Then I'm going to choose my codes. These are the codes that tell me what the material is. So that's why we have to have the codes. I'm going to pick my-- put my cursor at the end of the name, and hit Insert, and click OK. Now, you can see it did it for the first region, or for the first baseline, but it didn't do it for the second baseline. There are multiple baselines on here. So when you go to do this, you're going to need to go ahead and do it for each and every one of them. So once I've done that, I'm going to leave mine like it is for now so I can see why I make sure it's done for each and every one.

I'm going to hit Next. I don't really need to do anything here, so I'm going to click Next. So you could basically say which ones you want visible, and then this is where you make sure you set it into a new drawing. So I'll click add to a new drawing, go out and tell it where I want that. I'm going to just take this as practice so I know which one is which, and click Save. Now I can extract the solids. Looks like it finished. So I'm going to go open up that practice file. We'll give it a second to open here, and I'll just do a zoom [? extents. ?]

There we go. Now it's in there. All right, so when I look at this, instead of what I selected, it's not selecting the whole corridor at once. It's selecting one lane at a time, and that's the top material that it's selecting. If I were looking at it in the 3D view, I could select the base, the sub base, all of that. But let me go into my Layer Properties Manager. You can see, it brought in the region name and the code, but these, that I didn't get around to modifying in those different baselines, it left them as the default. So that's why it's important in that extract corridor dialog box to go and set the naming template for each region or each baseline of the corridor.

But if I had done it correctly, I could actually come in here, and Control-A to select all. I'll hold my Control key down just to select layer zero. Get rid of that one. Now I hit Control-C to copy it, and let me open up-- I don't have Project Management Software, so I'm going to use Excel. And I'll just take Control-V so that it brings that in. Now I can just take that column and do whatever I need to, whether I take it into Microsoft Project, or Primavera, whatever. When it's all said and done, when you have everything set up inside of your Project Management Software, the ideal situation is it would look a little bit something like this.

Here's my name column exactly from the Layers Manager. Here's my actual start date, planned start date. So these are some of the minimum things that you would need in there. Questions on that? All right, let's go back, and let you give it a try, then. Now you can touch your mice. On page eight of your handout, you're going to do exercise number two. It is a few pages. So it will take you about five minutes because it's really short and sweet.

OK, for time's sake, we need to keep moving. Did everyone have a chance to at least try to set those naming templates up? You're good there? OK. So unfortunately, we do have to keep moving. Don't worry, I've set up the exercise files so that if you didn't complete the exercise 100%, we're going to be fine. We're all going to use the same file with the same information here in a few minutes to consolidate those. So all eyes on me again. And I'll wait until it's quiet. Excellent. All right, so the next piece is we are going to consolidate that separated out Revit model and the separated out Civil model, as well as the main model.

So when I separate my corridor out, I still bring in my site plan into Navisworks, and the reason is I don't want to have to redo the surface or anything like that. So I'll use my central Civil 3D file, bring that surface in, and then I'll bring in my corridor model that's all separated out, and that will give me everything I need when I go to do my consolidation inside Navisworks. So a little bit of information here. When you're working with Navisworks, there are a number of different file types that are supported. You can read them here. You've got MicroStation, Revit, Sketch Up, STPs. There's a lot of stuff here that you can actually bring into Navisworks It reads all kinds of file types. And so we're going to learn how to bring those together.

When you bring them together, there are multiple types of files that it creates, or that it can create. Now, by default, this cache file gets created. As soon as you bring in a Revit file, a cache file is created with the same name as the Revit file, and it has NWC at the end, instead of RVT. One second. Dry throat in this crazy weather. But basically, it's saying this is just a snapshot of that file. I apologize for that. And it allows you to bring in a lot of very large models together, without bogging down the computer. So the Navisworks file itself is rather small compared to the files that it's referencing in.

Now, which one you do as far as-- there we go. Whether you save it as an NWD file or an NWF file, once you have that compiled model, all depends on if you want it to update automatically. The NWF file will keep an eye on the Civil file and the Revit file. And if there are changes, it will automatically show up in Navisworks. If for some reason it doesn't, what you can do is go and delete that cache file, and then when you open it up again, it'll create a brand new cache file, and it will be updated to the newest model.

Now, if you just want a snapshot and you don't want it to automatically update, that's where the NWD file comes in. When you're bringing them in, earlier I said that it's important to set up that Revit project base point because it doesn't ask you what insertion point you want, what scale you want, or rotation. And it doesn't ask you what units either, by the way. But Navisworks in a unitless environment. So we can actually go in and tell it what units we want to see when we go measure things. And when we bring models in, if I have my Civil model in feet and inches, but my building was done in metric units, it's not a problem.

We can tell it to transform it using the units and transform option. You basically tell it what type of units it was designed in, centimeters, meters, whatever, and then you can set the origin. So you've got the x, y, and behind that little drop down is the z, and you can set the rotation and the scale. That's if you know the exact coordinate-- that nothing and easting coordinate where you want it to move to, and it's based on the center of the model when you use this transform option. So that's why I like to set it inside Revit, so I can set it right at the building corner instead.

If you don't know the exact coordinates, and in fact, in your exercise, you're going to bring in an Inventor file that is an air conditioning unit, and you're going to place it on top of the building. We'll start out using the units and transform so we can get it close, and then we can use the measure tools and figure out exactly how far east and west we need to move that. And if you know the difference in the direction you want it to go, you can use the override transform, and you'll put the difference in the x, and the difference in the y, and the difference in the z.

Heads up display is another secret revealed here. If you use your heads up display inside of Navisworks, it can help you calculate that transformation that you might need to use. Basically, the heads up display tells you where you are in the Navisworks model, and you can put your cursor where you want it to go, and calculate the difference between them. So that's a quick way to figure that out. All right, let me show it to you in the software. All right, so here I am inside of Navisworks. I'm going to simply open a drawing file. Let me close my sets, here, and my selection tree.

So I'm going to open, and where are you? Actually, I need to go to my project files. So I'm going to go to my Civil 3D files, source drawing, surfaces, and open up this site layout. Now, I highly recommend once you're done with Revit, close it. Once you're done with Civil 3D, close it. It's going to be fine if I just open this right now because, remember, it's creating that cache file, and it's going to use that to show inside here. But it's always a good idea to not have a lot of software running when we're working with big files. So once that comes up, that it's opened up that site layout, I can then go in and click append. And when I append, I want to change my file types, right down here, to all files, so that I can see multiple file types all at once.

And let me go back up to my scheduling directory, which is what you'll guys will use as well. And I'm going to use my Redstone Park Solids. I save it like this so that I know this is already separated out. This is the road name, and it's already separated out into solids. So that's the one I'm going to use. And I will also bring in my Revit school architecture TimeLiner file because I know it's already separated into parts. So I select those. I just hold Control key down to select multiple. I'll click Open. And in a second, that'll come up and say, hey, it's done. It'll just show up because-- why does it just show up? Why does it come in the right place?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: Because what?

AUDIENCE: [INTERPOSING VOICES]

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: Set the base point. Who said it? OK, I'll try not to hit anyone. Oh, sorry. All right. OK, so you can see, here is my model, now, and you just use regular viewing commands. When you use the view cube, it's going to zoom you all the way out. Look at this. This is at layer zero. You know you've got a true civil 3D file if you've got some stuff at elevation zero, and some stuff at the actual elevation. So you can see my model. It looks nice. If I wanted to, I can select the surface. This is my existing ground surface. It's getting there. It's burying my building a little bit. I can hide that.

But here's a little secret revealed. If you have something hidden in the Navisworks file, and you go to run the simulator, whatever is hidden here, it's going to be hidden in your simulation. So watch out for that. A quick way to fix that is to go in and click unhide all. Boom, everything is back. I don't have to worry about it when I go to simulate. Everything's going to show up right where I want it to. Now, I'm going to bring my selection tree back up. If I needed to change the location of any of these-- in fact, you're going to do this when you bring your Inventor file in. You will right-click on the file that you need to change its location, and do your units and transform. Here's the dialog box I was showing you on the screen earlier. I can set the units of that file, the origin, the rotation, scale, and so on.

If I want to just put the difference in, I can go back in and select the file, right-click, and go down to override item, and do an override transform. This is where you put the difference in the x and the y that you want it to move. Difference in distance. Questions on that? Now, I failed. I have to admit. I failed to check what units are set up on your machines. I wasn't planning on you doing this. This is an exception to the rule. So no penalties. Go ahead and do this with me.

Open up your Navisworks. I want you to go to the menu browser at the very top of the screen, and go to Options. Expand your interface, and click your display units. Set those linear units up to feet and inches. It's just going to show you-- because remember, I said Navisworks his unitless. You just want to tell it what units you want it to display as. All right. So we've all got that. Now, it is your turn to go ahead and do another exercise. This one will take about five minutes as well. You're going to consolidate that model. It starts on page 13.

So if you're done, we're going to do a little stretch. Everyone stand up and stretch. I know it's morning. You've got to stand up. You've got to get up. Get a good stretch in there. Everyone do it. We want to make sure the blood's flowing because this is the next part is what you really came here for-- to simulate. So everyone stretch. Get that blood flowing. OK, for time's sake, I am going to go ahead and keep moving. But again, don't worry. If you didn't finish that, the next file is already set up as if you did finish it. So not to worry. OK, so here we are. Very last objective of the class. We are going to simulate the construction of the entire project using a combination of TimeLiner and Animator. Are we ready?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: I didn't hear you. What?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: Yes. Yes, good. All right. So introduction to TimeLiner. There are multiple tabs inside of TimeLiner. There's your task tab, your data sources tab, configure tab, and your simulate tab. The tasks, here, need to match your construction management software. So this is where, again, what's the most important thing in construction? Communication! Who said that? You get a book. All right, I have two of them. So you're not out yet. It's not over yet. So yeah, communication is key. So you want to communicate with your project manager, and find out all the planned start and end dates, names, and everything.

When you're creating this task list inside of Navisworks, there are two ways to do it. You can do it from scratch or you can import it from a task list from a project management software. So when you go and import that from a project management software, here are the softwares that you can use. Microsoft Project or Primavera. If you're using something other than that, you also have the a CSV import option. So you just take that project management stuff, export it out to CSV, open it up inside Navisworks. Didn't miss a beat, right?

All right, so the other thing we're going to do, remember, I said that you can have things come in different colors, and we want to make sure we set those colors up. So on the Configure tab, that's where we would do that. We would set up-- when we're doing some construction, it would come in as green, and then when it's done building, it'll show up as whatever materials, whether it was brick or whatever. When we're demolishing something, however, like that existing ground we're going to remove, you will have it start out as the model appearance, and then hide at the end because it's gone. It's demolished.

And then you might even have something like a temporary setup. Maybe you need to have the traffic continue to go on this road that you're rebuilding. Well, you can create a temporary corridor, and that can come in as yellow or whatever color you want it at whatever transparency. So you'll set that up all on the Configure tab. And then finally, the simulate tab. Again, it has your task lists over here. Your Gantt chart to show you a visual of where that's going to fall in the construction schedule. And then just our players, and it's pretty simple players, really. The same thing that you're used to in any media player type of a thing-- audio player. Your forward, back, all of that.

When you are creating your task list-- this is a key to making it work properly-- is those safe sets. The reason these are so important is because I'm lazy. I will admit it. I like to go on vacation, sit on the beach, relax in a lounge chair. No, actually Nancy knows me better than that. I like the adventures, right, Nancy?

NANCY: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: I like to go, go, go. But because I like to go so much, I want to get things done as fast as I can, and I'm sure you guys have busy lives too, and you want to get things done as fast as you can. If you take the time to set up these save sets, and you have them match object names inside of Revit, you can have it automatically connect. Isn't that nice? Boom. It's done. If you have it match your layers inside of Civil 3D, you can have it automatically populate.

So basically, what do I mean by this? Well, we're going to use a save set to connect something in the task list with something in the model because to the computer, that task list is just a spreadsheet. It's just words. It's binary. It's ones and zeros. Until you tell it what object in the model to connect to, it's stupid. So you need to tell it what to connect to, and setting up those save sets is going to help you do that much faster.

And this is basically what's happening when we go and attach it. So these are the columns in our task list. This attach column, if you right-click on that field, you can get this little fly out that allows you to attach a set, and pick a set from the list. Those have to already be created, though. So you're going to learn how to create one. Then you're opening up a file that has a bunch of them created, just to save time. OK, here's our appearance. When we go in and configure a new appearance, we can set that up. We set the name, the color, and the transparency, and define the simulation start appearance right down here. I'm going to show you that in the software. So don't go yet. Let me show this to you.

So to open up TimeLiner, I am going to go to the Home tab, tools panel, and click TimeLiner. Here are our tasks. Basically, everything I showed you-- to add a new task, I am going to simply click Add Task. I'll give it a name. So this is demo EG, for my Existing Ground. I can give it a planned start date and a planned end date. Maybe it ends tomorrow, instead of today. And my actual-- now, why would I care about planned and actual? Tracking my schedules. Who said that? You get a book. Martha, do you mind? All right.

AUDIENCE: Throw it!

MICHELLE RASMUSSEN: I would definitely hurt someone, and it wouldn't get to him. OK, so now, the next thing I need to do is scroll over. In the task type column, I need to actually tell it what type of task it is. So is it a construct, demolish, or temporary, or some other type that I can create? So I'm going to tell it this is the demolish, and I need to tell it what to attach it to. Now, this dialog box, I can move it around, dock it, whatever I want to do. I can work in my model while it's open, and I'm going to select that surface. That's my existing ground. And then when I right-click on the attach column, I can also tell it to attach the current selection.

So I don't have to have a save set if it's just one item. Boom. It's saved or it's created. Now I'm going to add another one. I'll add another task here, and call this my FG for future ground. And I would set the plans and end dates. Tell it to be construct because it's going to be constructed. And let me go ahead and grab the finished ground surface. Again, I can right-click, and tell it to attach my current selection. So if I go to simulate that-- move that aside. There's my existing ground, and when it finishes, it will show my finished ground. In fact, you can see I can hover over it. It's giving me an idea of what that is, and I didn't put any-- I forgot, I did not put any dates in the second one. So that was my bad.

But on the Configure tab, if I wanted to change how those look, I can just click inside the column and change it, or I can add a new appearance definition, and set my appearance up. I just click Add. Maybe this is my-- OK, so I set that up, tell it what color I want it, how transparent I want it, so it turns out gray, and click OK. So it's that easy to create the task. What I want you to do is go ahead and try creating those manual tasks. In your handout, turn to page 24. And you do want to open up the Navisworks file. It has you open. Just so you have all the files set up properly.