Comparing baselines with updated schedules - Synchro Tutorial

- [Instructor] We have been working with an imported XML schedule from Microsoft Project. In addition to importing external schedules, SYNCHRO 4D can also synchronize the schedule updates and compare it against a baseline. You can continue working on the file from the previous video or open the provided chapter file with the same name under the chapter files folder. When you bring in a schedule the first time, you do so by going to File and Import. However, when updating an imported schedule, you do so by going to the Navigator ribbon and clicking on External Data. This window on the left shows a list of all the data that's imported in the project for both schedules and the 3D models. On right clicking on Training Project Schedule.xml, you can choose Synchronize From and select an updated XML file. Let's cancel this for now. Before updating the current schedule, we do need to make a baseline. Baselines and scenarios, both interchangeable terms based on the use case, are snapshots in time of all the task properties. In simpler terms, it saves the selected task and the duration, dates, logic links, et cetera. Go to Project Controls ribbon and click on Baselines and Scenarios. In this window, you can create, modify and even restore different baselines. To create a baseline of the current schedule, either click on the Baseline Task command in the Project Controls ribbon or right click on the task list and select Baseline Tasks. The popup window will ask you to update the critical path if it's not already. So click yes. Here you can set a name for the baseline and I'm going to leave it default. You get a few options of filtering out which tasks you want to baseline but let's click on baseline all tasks and press OK. Now that we have our current schedule saved, let's make a simple change so that we can easily compare it to the baseline. In the task list, select the task Building Permit, and change the start date to 2/4/2016,] indicating that the project is delayed by about a month. From under the Task Properties, General tab, change the constraints to cannot reschedule and reschedule the whole project. Select the baseline and see how it compares in the Gantt chart with the baseline taskbars being displayed as blue. You can change this color from under the Baselines and Scenario window. To turn off the baseline display in the Gantt chart, you can either deselect the baseline or go to the Plan ribbon, Gantt Display Options and uncheck on baselines. If you wanted to do more detailed comparisons, you are display the column data for baselines as well. Go to the Task List header, right click, customize columns, and here, search BL for baselines. Let's select BL Start and BL Finish. If you don't have a baseline selected, these columns will be empty. If you have multiple baselines, you can easily switch between the data on the fly. This also means that at one time, you can only see one baseline or scenario to be compared with the planned or actual schedule. Before making all these changes to the original schedule, we should have created a baseline of it but don't worry, we can still do that. Instead of synchronizing an updated schedule, let's do so for the original one. Since we made some changes after baselining the current schedule, let's update it by right clicking on the baseline, selecting baseline tasks, update the critical path and baseline all tasks. Now we can go to the external data window, right click on Training Project Schedule and select Synchronize From. Here browse to SYNCHRO 4D Training folder, Schedule and select Training Project Schedule. And click Next. Here you have the option to choose a command, synchronize, consolidate, integrate or skip for each different schedule attributes. To give you a brief insight on these commands, synchronize completely replaces the existing schedule with the updated schedule so you lose the edits made within SYNCHRO 4D. With consolidate, any schedule changes made externally or even within SYNCHRO 4D will still exist and nothing is deleted. Integrate is similar to synchronize but will only make modifications to the selected external schedule in cases you have multiple imported schedules and don't want the updates to affect each other. I would highly recommend going through the help documentation to understand how each of these commands differentiate. There's also a nifty flowchart to determine which command to use in which scenario. Let's keep these settings as default as it works best for most scenarios. And click on Synchronize. Now that we have the original schedule in, we can save this one as a baseline as well and name it Original Baseline. With both schedules saved, let's get back to where we were with the latest schedule changes. You can do this by right clicking on the first baseline and select restore baseline tasks. Now we'll finally take things beyond the 2D view of a Gantt and task list and take advantage of working in a 4D environment by visually comparing the baselines through multiple side-by-side 3D view windows. Go to the Windows ribbon and under Command Panel, click on 3D. This opens another 3D window, which you can snap to either side of the existing 3D window. Right click on one of the 3D view and select Camera, Link All. This enables you to keep the same camera angles in both windows at the same time. Notice how in the 3D window title bar, it says using dates best. We can change that by going to 3D View Properties, General tab and under the dates and colors, click on dates to use. Here you have the default set to best but you can change it to reflect plan or actuals and also baseline. Right below the dates to use, you can select which baseline you want to compare with just the original baseline. Take note of the 3D window title bar again, reflecting our current selection. Now we have the 3D resource assignments following the original baseline schedule on the left and the current plan schedule on the right. Scrub the focus time marker throughout the project timeline to compare the schedules visually through the 4D simulation.