There’s always been a discussion about Synchro vs Navisworks Timeliner. What’s the better Project Management solution?
This is in no way a full out comparison between the two solutions, and I don’t think it is fair to say one is better than the other. This article is merely a highlight of some opposing features and workflows between the two programs. Also, in this article we are focusing on using these tools for Project Management, not other things like 3D Walkthroughs, clash detection, or sales like video renderings. While those things are important, Project Management is what we will address here.
Bias
I like to think that I am not biased. I've been using both Synchro and Navisworks since 2009, and continue to use both of them to this day. Most notably, I have used both Synchro and Navisworks on the same baseball stadium that recently opened this month in Miami. Yes, both. I won't get into why (politics) or how far with each. What I will get into is how these Project Management tools work and how they differ.
Project Management
Let's be clear, we are talking about using these tools to "validate" a project schedule by creating a "virtual rehearsal" of the project, and then communicating that idea to project stakeholders, from foremen to owners. It doesn't matter if the project is at a Macro-level (phase 1, 2, 3, etc) or the Micro Level (place rebar cage). It doesn't matter if the project is vertical construction or heavy civil, or airplane assemblies. What matters is that you have resources (i.e. materials, equipment, people, space, money, and time) and you need to figure out the best way to use these resources to complete your project.
User Interface
While user interface doesn’t have much to do with Project Management, being able to use the software at its full potential does. You can't deny the Ribbon Interface, since its introduction with Microsoft Office 2007, the ribbon has caught on with several software platforms including Autodesk. The ribbon is great because it organizes the way commands are shown based on their use and context. The Ribbon is the reason I was able to learn Revit 2010 (while failing miserably with 2009), it made it so easy to learn. Navisworks deployed the ribbon in it's 2011 release, and we are seeing how fast people are catching on.
Synchro is lacking in this arena, it still uses the old-fashion toolbars, the icons are very small and hard to see, and there are so many of them.
Advantage: Navisworks
Navigating and Selecting
Selecting 3D geometry in Navisworks is not very user friendly. In order to Navigate around the model you must use one of the cameral tools (i.e. walk, fly, orbit, pan, etc.) then to select an object you must click on the select tool then go back to your 3D view and select objects, make sure to hold the ctrl key to select multiple objects, and if you accidentally let go of ctrl while selecting these objects then all your progress [of selecting multiple objects] is gone.
Want to draw a box around a bunch of objects? That is it's own tool too, called "Selection Box", it is frustrating to have to go back and forth. However, if you own a 3D Connexion Mouse, you can use this to Navigate while keeping your mouse in "Select" mode. You'll still need to switch between Select Mode and Selection Box Mode if you want to select multiple objects at once, but the 3D Mouse will save you hours over the course of a day.
For Synchro, it is the opposite, you don't need to go back and forth between the select tool and the camera tools. You just stay in "examine" mode, which is like orbit, and when you want to select something just hold down ctrl and you can select objects. Need to turn the corner to select more objects? You can let go of the ctrl key, move around, and select what you need by holding ctrl again, don't worry about losing your selection. While your at it, you can draw a selection box, and yes the direction that you draw your box will dictate what is selected within that box (I like to call this "selective selecting"). Synchro does support the 3D Connexion mouse, but its not that great, and you really don't need it because of its already simple navigation and selection method.
Advantage: Synchro
Cost
Depending on if you buy Navisworks in a Suite or not, it could cost you thousands of dollars more than Synchro, or it could cost thousands less. There are so many different possibilities and configurations it would be impossible to say one is cheaper than the other. For example, if you already have Navisworks Manage for Clash Detection, then buying Synchro will be a more expensive solution from a pure cost standpoint. If you use Solibri or other Clash Detection Software, or don't have Navisworks Manage then Synchro will be less expensive from a pure cost perspective.
If you use Navisworks or Synchro properly for Project Management then they'll both save you 10-fold what they cost.
Advantage: Neither
Interoperability: 3D
Both software solutions work with most any file type from Autodesk authoring software. Navisworks Manage 2013 can convert rvt files directly to nwc files now, so their is no need to have your BIM Manager export them for you. If you're in the AEC industry you won't have much to worry about either software, they both support most AEC Industry file formats, including ifc. If you are in the manufacturing industry, Navisworks can open most of these file types. However, if your main authoring software uses the Hoops 3D driver, than Synchro is the better choice.
Advantage: Navisworks
Interoperability: Scheduling
Navisworks & Synchro can work with P3, P6 v8, MS Project based xml files, and as of 2013 Asta Powerproject. Synchro has the added ability to synchronize with PMA Netpoint. But the real advantage here is that Synchro can bring things in like resources, calendars, companies, and has so many options for what can by synced and how. The configurations are endless.
Advantage: Synchro
Reporting
Although Synchro offers Gantt Chart Reports (Navis doesn't), if you are using another program to compile your schedule why wouldn't you use that to export PDF reports? If you couldn't or if your creating the schedule with Synchro or Navisworks, then…
Advantage: Synchro
Animations
Synchro has 3D Paths which are really easy to create and manipulate if you don't need to be exact or precise. You can create a 3d path, then assign objects (that are assigned to tasks) to that path. The issue is if you want to manipulate the path in a very exact way it can be a little difficult, you are stuck using millimeters as your default UOM, and the path does not dictate speed, your speed is based on the length of the 3D Path divided by the duration of the task. This may or may not be good: why is this object changing speed, does another activity need to be added to the schedule?
Navisworks is quite the opposite, if you just want to quickly move something this can be confusing and tedious. But once you have it set, changing the specifics is relatively easy, including rotating objects, which is very difficult within Synchro. Once you've set up the animation you need to create a script for the animation to occur once a task has started or ended. The big problem here, is that you've set your animation to take 5 seconds, but that won't change based on how fast your schedule is moving once you export a simulation. So that 5 seconds could take a year, or a week.
So although animating objects in Synchro is more difficult than in Navisworks, assigning that animation to a task actually works the way you want it.
Advantage: Synchro
Intelligence / Rules / Auto-Matching
Both Synchro and Navisworks are lacking in this area, big time. These models that we import are so intelligent, and almost none of the intelligence is used when compiling, maintaining, or creating a 4D Schedule.
Navisworks does have "Search Sets", its pretty cool, you can basically make a selection based off of properties. A search set would look like this: "All columns", or it could look like this: "all concrete columns from file A, on the first floor, that are less than 5 CY in volume but more than 300 SFCA, and are in Phase 1, and have Parameter B". Now every time you update or refresh your Navis model this Search Set will be up to date. So this works great because you can quickly group 3D objects based on their properties. Then when you go to attach objects to a scheduled task you can just attach this search set. Now when you update or refresh the model and your search set has new objects, the task will reflect that.
But what if our schedule had intelligence too? What if it wasn't just our 3D objects that had properties or metadata too? What if the activities had properties like phase, floor, sector, contractor, task type (form, rebar, pour, etc) and so on? Then we could intelligently attach 3D objects to activities from the schedule.
The problem with Rules in Navisworks is that you can't have more than one User field per task and per 3D object for each rule. So with the example properties above, every 3D Object with the Phase 1 property would be assigned to every activity with the Phase 1 property. But hey, at least you can choose which one property (Phase in this case) that you want to use. Another big problem is applying a rule will overwrite any existing attachments to affected tasks. Oh yea, and there is no way to verify what will change before you hit apply, or what has changed after you hit apply. So cross your fingers and hope you didn’t mess anything up. On the Macro level, Rules in Navisworks could be useful, on the micro level, no way.
Synchro does not, sadly, have search sets. It does though have filters and resources. A 3D Filter will allow you to hide or show everything in your 3D view based on a number of things. Properties, or parameters, is not one of them.
A resource in Synchro, is more or less the same thing as a Selection Set in Navisworks, which is just a named group of 3D Objects. Unlike Navisworks, your 3D Objects need to be a part of a Resource in order to be attached/assigned to a task, which forces you to identify what you have in your model. And unlike Navisworks, you can add properties to your Resources.
Like Rules in Navisworks, Synchro implemented Auto-Matching. So even though there is no Search Sets in Synchro, you can still assign 3D Resources to tasks based on properties. And it works far better. You can use Booleans to assign resources like the example for Search Sets above. And unlike Navisworks, you can preview which resources will be assigned to which tasks before you hit apply.
Advantage: Synchro (by a long shot)
Sharing with Others
Autodesk does have quite a handle on the AEC market. Navisworks Freedom, which is the free file viewer for Navisworks Documents, or nwd files, is quite popular and happens to be my software of choice for viewing 3D DWFs. What is nice about Navisworks Freedom is we are starting to see it more and more on peoples machines, even if they didn't know they had it. Sort of like Adobe Reader.
Synchro released its Open Viewer last year, and it works as intended, with the same clunky interface. All of the commands from Synchro Pro are there too though, Synchro makes no effort to make this free viewer more “Foreman Friendly”. When you click on a command that's only for the Professional version you just get an annoying pop up that tells you so.
Both programs are large, and take up a lot of system resources when open. Neither one requires better hardware than the other.
Advantage: Navisworks
Workflow
This is, in my opinion, what makes all the difference between Navisworks and Synchro. The workflow. To talk about the workflow we need to identify how both programs link 3D to the schedule. In Navisworks speak, this is, "attach objects to activities". In Synchro speak, this is, " assign resources to tasks". You get the gist.
Navisworks has “Task Type”, and Synchro has “Use Profile”. What these do is tell the software how to display objects/resources before, during, and after the attached or assigned task. For example, see the table below, if something is using the Install Task Type or Use Profile, then before the task its attached or assigned to the object will not appear, during the task it will appear but be green, and after the task is done it will be its original color.
| | Before | During | After |
| Install | invisible | green | original color |
| Remove | original color | green | invisible |
| Temporary | invisible | green | invisible |
| Maintain | original color | green | original color |
Synchro’s Use Profiles are used for a resource within a task. So a single resource can have different use profiles for different tasks, and a single task can have different resources, all with different Use Profiles. Navisworks, on the other hand, will only allow you to use one Task Type per task.
Lastly, Synchro always has its focus time on, you can never turn it off. This means that you will always be looking at a snapshot of your project at a certain day (or second if you want to be precise). If your focus time is set to the beginning of a project, and you start assigning 3D resources (with the install use profile) to tasks that occur after your focus time then those resources will disappear in your 3D Window. Move your focus time to the same time as the task and you’ll see it appear.
Navisworks’ focus time is only displayed while in your simulate mode, and while your in simulate mode you can’t make any changes. While your not in Simulate mode, everything is on, leaving you clueless as to what has been attached to tasks and what hasn't.
Clash Detection
Both Synchro and Navisworks offer clash detection. I’ll spare you some time, Synchro’s Clash Detection, or Spatial Coordination, works, but the interface and organization just can’t compete with Navisworks’. After all Navisworks was made for Clash Detection.
Advantage: Navisworks
Conclusion
The workflow is the most important thing here, Synchro forces you to do it right. I can’t tell you how many times I have left large steel beams, or concrete slabs just floating in the middle of the air because there was no task for them. It forced me, or my scheduler, to create those tasks so we can make our “Virtual Rehearsal” correct.
Navisworks won’t show you what isn’t attached to a task, heck, it barely shows you what is attached to a task. Both Navisworks and Synchro have selection trees, but Navisworks only has one. Synchro has several, one for 3D, one for resources, and one for each and every task. Showing the resources selection tree for a given task is priceless, and is one of the main reasons Navisworks is difficult to use on even medium sized projects.
In the end, to manage a project, to validate a schedule, to do a virtual rehearsal, the way Synchro works forces you to create a full detailed schedule with correct sequencing and everything. The way Navisworks works allows you to make mistakes, and makes it difficult to correct them.
Think of Project Management like a piece of wood you need to cut in half. Navisworks is like the Swiss Army Knife that has a lot of tools with the cute little hack saw. Synchro is like the 24” hack saw you buy at Ace Hardware, no extra tools, but man it can cut.
