Data management for animation of construction processes

Animation of construction processes is a useful tool to understand the complexity of civil engineering projects. The basic idea of existing four-dimensional (4D) animation approaches is to establish a link between a construction task and the component where the task is executed. Tasks are defined in scheduling tools; components are defined in CAD tools. The use of three-dimensional (3D) CAD tools for the specification of components in combination with a schedule results in a 4D CAD environment where time represents the fourth dimension. A lot of investigations have been conducted, and 4D CAD is used more and more in civil engineering projects. However, the approaches described in literature accept the existence of traditional scheduling and traditional 3D CAD. Tasks are stored in scheduling tools; and components are stored in CAD tools. This paper presents the use of an approach for animating construction processes that has been originally developed for scheduling. The data model of this approach is described, and consequences of using this approach in the field of animating construction processes are discussed and illustrated. The approach has been tested in practice; and examples from real projects are presented. These examples show the power of the approach presented: the data management allows an efficient and suitable use of animating different kinds of information. Different kinds of projects require an animation of different kinds of information, and this can be done without any additional effort. However, the approach does not result in different animations compared to existing tools; the novelty results from the possibility to animate different kinds of information.