Navisworks timeliner

[DougBIM]

Two part question:

1. Is anyone using this feature regularly or are people using third party software to do this?

2. Is anyone doing this for the MEP industry?

[payre]

1. My core business is construction scheduling, but I produce two or three detailed timeline animations for tenders each year using Navisworks. It used to be more when I worked for a large construction company but now I have my own business and not all clients are willing to pay for it. I have a subscription for Navisworks because a major project I'm involved with use it for coordination. I am seriously considering switching to a Synchro subscription when NW runs out in a couple of months. Sychro is about three times the price, but I believe it will save me that and hopefully more in time through not crashing as often or just the constant backwards and forwards process of updating the schedule in NW. I've only done the trial of Synchro so I'm sure there are some negatives I don't know about yet. I've championed the NW cause since it was Jetstream, and I have been able to produce some real quality output, but after so many recent NW issues I just have to try something different.

2. I've used NW timeliner on a water treatment plant and a building central energy plant. Both were to check the installation process and convey this to the MEP subcontractors involved, basically proving to them that if they followed the plan they could work continuously without having to stop and start to wait for each other. It was a lot of time, effort and dollars, but in the long run it was peanuts compared to saving just a few days of site work for these particular projects.