Import 4D Information to Navisworks

How to import 4D timeline data from and IFC file

The below explains how to use the Geometry Gym Navisworks plug-in to attach 4D information from an IFC file to the Navisworks Manage time liner.

Step 1

1. The first step is to ensure that the .ifc file that you are wanting to import into Navisworks has 4D information assigned to it. To check this you can use the free Geometry Gym ifc viewer or open the .Ifc in Rhino or Revit and load the file into the tree viewer.

Viewing Work Controls in IFC Tree viewer

There are several ways you can use Rhino and Grasshopper to generate the 4D IFC data in an IFC file. This is not apart of this guide.

Step 2

1. Open Navisworks Manage.

2. First you need to import the geometric representation of information stored within the IFC file. You do this using the out-of-the-box Navisworks IFC importer. Select the .ifc file with the 4D information assigned.

3. You should see the geometry now imported into Navisworks.

Import IFC geometry

Figure Navisworks Geometry view from .ifc

Step 4

1. Now that you have imported the geometry into Navisworks you can use the GeometryGym add on to assign the 4D information to the Navisworks TimeLiner. Select the same file in which you used to import the geometry.

2. The timeline information should now be imported into the Navisworks TimeLiner and assigned to the appropriate objects as shown in the image below.

Figure Select .ifc file to import 4D information

Figure Import of timeline information