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BIM Timeline - the schedule on the model

Cupix Support Center
  • Updated

BIM Timeline overview

A BIM model tells you what the building should be. A schedule tells you when each part of it should exist. A 360° capture shows what is actually there. BIM Timeline puts all three on one screen: it draws the model as the schedule says it should stand on a date you choose, beside the capture of the site as it was photographed.

Caution: The model is drawn from the plan only. It is never painted with progress, and no colour on it means “late”, “done” or “on time”. The model is the intent; reality is the 360 beside it. Comparing the two is your job, and the whole point of putting them side by side.

Getting started

What the project needs, how to open the schedule, and what is on screen.

Requirements

BIM Timeline is not a switch you turn on - it appears when the project has the mapping behind it, and it appears in two stages.

With BIM mapping only, you get BIM Compare: the model beside the capture, and the scope filters. There is no Schedule on the menu, because nothing has told the product when each element is due.
With schedule mapping as well - or on a SiteInsights project, where the SiteInsights setup supplies it - the Schedule entry appears and the time dimension comes with it.

Note: If you are looking for Schedule and it is not on the menu, the project is at the first stage. That is a setup question for your Cupix contact, not something to hunt for elsewhere in the viewer.

Open the schedule

  1. Choose BIM in the left rail. The model pane opens beside the capture; on a large model give it a moment - it fills in rather than showing a spinner.
  2. Open the model pane's ⋮ menu and choose Schedule.

The same menu holds Section Analysis, Model Structure, Properties, Maximize and Settings - Schedule is the one that brings the timeline up.

The model pane's menu, with Schedule on it.
  1. The BIM tool in the left rail
  2. The model pane's menu
  3. Schedule - the one that opens the timeline

Screen layout

Three areas, and they stay on screen together. The capture viewer on the left is the site as photographed. The model pane on the right is the BIM. The bottom dock carries the schedule.

That dock is shared. Map puts the reference floor plan there, Schedule puts the timeline there, and only one is shown at a time - the switch appears when both want the space. Each row of the schedule is a task with its start and end, drawn as a bar against the calendar.

The dashed line labelled Current Capture marks where the capture you are standing in sits on the programme. It does not move when you move the date, and that is the point of it: it is the fixed mark the time window is read against.

The three areas, with the schedule in the bottom dock.
  1. The capture - the site as photographed
  2. The model - the site as planned
  3. Map or Schedule, sharing the bottom dock
  4. Current Capture - where you are standing

Model display

Three controls decide what is drawn: which models, how the tasks are grouped, and which stretch of time.

BIM Selector and filters

Two controls decide what is on the model pane at all, and they work before any date does.

The BIM Selector - the file name above the model pane - chooses which BIM files, and which of their views, are drawn. A project can carry several models (architecture, structural, HVAC), each offering several views of itself.
The filters, behind the funnel icon, narrow within that: Location down Level → Work Area Group → Work Area, and Trade down Category → Sub-Category.

Note: An element in a model you have switched off is not drawn, whatever the schedule says. Select a task whose elements live in a model that is off and the product says so under the chart rather than leaving you to guess - switch that model on and they appear. This is the single most common confusion on this screen: a task looks like it has nothing behind it when it is only hidden.
The schedule broken down by location - levels first.
  1. The BIM Selector - which models are drawn
  2. The filters - Location and Trade
  3. Grouped by location - levels first
  4. The same window, drawn on the chart

Breakdown - location or trade

BREAKDOWN regroups the same schedule two ways, and the choice is really a choice of question.

BREAKDOWN Groups the tasks as Use it to ask
Location Level → Work Area → Category → Sub-Category - the way the building is built Is this floor on time?
Trade Category → Sub-Category → Level → Work Area - the way the work is contracted Is this subcontractor on time?

Either way the columns are the same: the task name, the activity it belongs to, and its planned Start and End. Open a row to go down a level.

The same schedule broken down by trade.
  1. Group the tasks by location or by trade
  2. A category opened onto its sub-categories
  3. Planned start and end

4D - date or window

The 4D row is what makes this a timeline rather than a model viewer. It decides which slice of the programme the model is drawn for.

Setting What the model is drawn for
Off No date at all - the model renders plainly
Point A single date; the chip reads As of <date> and the chart shows one line
1w, 2w, 4w A window of that length, looking ahead from where you are
Custom A window you set: a duration you slide along the programme, or exact dates you pin

Whichever you pick, the chip beside the row always names the window in force - 1w · Oct 2 → Oct 8 - and the same window is drawn as a shaded band on the chart. What you see on the model and what you see on the chart are always the same stretch of time.

Note: DATE SCALE + / - is not the window. It zooms the chart's own axis, making the columns wider or narrower so you can see more or less of the programme at once. It changes nothing about which dates the model is drawn for. Two controls that both look like time controls, and this is the sentence to keep.
A one-week window, named on the chip and drawn on the chart.
  1. How much of the programme to draw the model for
  2. The dates that window covers
  3. The same stretch, shaded on the chart
  4. DATE SCALE - zooms the chart, not the window

Reading the model

What the colours say, how they change as the window moves, and how to focus or step back.

Colours - what they mean

This is the part worth slowing down for, because the obvious guess is wrong. The colour is about time, not about progress. It tells you where an element sits relative to the window you chose - nothing about whether the work is late, early or finished.

What you see Where it sits What that means on site
Picked out in blue Inside the window Scheduled to be happening in the stretch of time you are looking at.
Its own model colours
grey, green, magenta - whatever that model is drawn in 		Before the window Already due. It should be standing by now - check the 360 beside it.
Not drawn at all After the window Not due yet at the date you are looking at.
Note: Two things follow, and both look like faults until you know the rule. A nearly empty model pane is the rule working - if everything in view is still ahead of your window, there is nothing left to draw. And green or magenta is not a third schedule state: those are simply the colours the structural and mechanical models are drawn in, showing through because those elements are behind you.

The product prints no colour key on screen, so the table above is worth keeping to hand the first few times.

Inside the window: the walls are picked out in blue.
  1. Inside the window: picked out in blue
  2. The window these elements fall in
  3. The tasks that window covers

Moving the window

The rule is easiest to trust once you have watched it move. This is the same structure and the same camera as the frame before, with the window moved forward past the structural work's end date.

The steel is no longer picked out - it has dropped back into the model's own green because it now sits before the window. The magenta running through it is the mechanical model, in its colours, for the same reason. Nothing about the schedule changed; only which slice of it you asked for.

Before the window: the same structure in its own model colours.
  1. Before the window: the model's own colours
  2. The window, now past this work
  3. Structural work, ended before the window
  4. Aerial Mode - the whole model, not the room

Move the window early in the programme instead - here Jun 8 → Jun 14 - and the opposite happens. The tasks in view all start after the window, so their elements are not drawn at all; only what falls inside it is left, picked out in blue.

After the window: what is not due yet is simply not drawn.
  1. After the window: not drawn at all
  2. A window early in the programme
  3. Everything here starts after the window

So moving the window does not repaint the model according to progress. It moves which slice is picked out, drops what is now behind you back into its own material, and stops drawing what has not arrived yet.

Task focus and Aerial Mode

Click a row and the schedule narrows to that task: its elements stay as they are and everything else fades back, dimmed rather than hidden, so you keep the context and lose the competition for attention. Selecting another row releases the first.

Aerial Mode does the opposite. By default the model follows the capture viewer, so you are looking at the model from where you are standing. Aerial Mode detaches it into a whole-model overview - a floor or a building at a glance instead of a corridor - and switching back re-syncs the two.

Between them, these two are how the screen is actually used: step back with Aerial to see the week across the whole structure, then drop into a task to ask what exactly is in it.

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