See Your Schedule Come to Life
Link schedule tasks to building elements and watch your construction sequence play out in 3D.
The Problem
Construction schedules live in timeline charts that are disconnected from the 3D model. There is no way to see what the building will look like at any point in time — you have to imagine it from the schedule. This makes it hard to spot sequencing conflicts, communicate progress to stakeholders, or catch delays early.
What teams do today: maintain the schedule in one tool, maintain the 3D model in another, and try to mentally connect the two. When the owner asks "what will the building look like in March?", you have to export a screenshot of the model, edit it in image software to remove elements that have not been built yet, and hope the schedule has not changed since you last checked. The process is manual, slow, and the result is often wrong.
- 1
Link tasks to building elements
Assign each schedule task to the building elements it concerns (for example, "Pour Level 2 slab" links to the Level 2 floor). The link works both ways — click a task to see its elements, or click an element to see its task.
- 2
Play the timeline
Open the timeline panel and slide through the schedule. The 3D model updates as you go — elements appear when their task starts and disappear if the task has not started yet. See your construction sequence play out in 3D.
- 3
Spot sequencing conflicts
Visually check for conflicts — an element that appears before its supporting structure, or two tasks that overlap in the same space. These conflicts are invisible in a timeline chart but obvious in 3D.
- 4
Track actual progress
As elements are installed on site, mark their tasks as complete. The 3D model updates to show what is actually built versus what is planned — giving you a live view of construction progress.
The Outcome
Sequencing conflicts are caught during planning, not during construction. The owner can see exactly what the building will look like at any date — no more image editing. And when construction starts, the model becomes a live progress tracker that shows what is built versus what is planned.
Results
Features Used
ApexBIM capabilities that power this workflow.
Related use cases
Who this helps
This use case is relevant to the following roles:
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