Authoring manufacturing process plans > 4D planning – visualizing construction over time

4D planning overview

Adding a time component to process planning to simulate and visualize construction over an extended period of time is referred to as 4D planning. 4D planning is used in very large structures to ascertain what parts are already assembled on a specific date in a specific part of the structure. For example, if you build a ship, you may want to begin fitting the cabins with furniture. It is necessary to know if the piping and electrical work is complete by April 30th to begin subsequent work. You can query your structure, taking the date into consideration, to see what has been assembled by April 30th.

Teamcenter uses an embedded Schedule Manager view to help you associate scheduling information with process planning operations. The Manufacturing – 4D Scheduling perspective already contains this view, in addition to structure views to assist you. This is the same view that is contained in the Schedule Manager application. Making a change in one changes the data in the other.

To help you view the precedence of work orders (processes) in the process plan, Teamcenter provides you with the 4D Gantt view. This view assists you in setting precedence constraints between work orders and scheduling all the processes and work orders in a given scope. You can traverse back and forth over the 4D analysis results and see the development of the process highlighted in the Graphics view.

The following are the prerequisites for using 4D planning:

Spatial information must be available for all product structures associated with the process used as the scope for the 4D analysis. This feature uses the spatial search to narrow down the search results. The spatial search allows you to search in the vicinity of a physical point.
A schedule with all relevant scheduling data must exist.
A process structure that contains only Process and Work Order types.
Use the GMT system time zone for date calculation.

You can see the start and end dates of a process by exposing the Start Date and Finish Date columns in the structure view.

When you open a schedule in Manufacturing Process Planner, a Schedule menu command is displayed in the menu bar.

For more information about using the commands in the Schedule menu list, see Schedule Manager — Deployment and Rich Client Usage.

Note

If the 4D Planning template is installed, you cannot use the Process Gantt view, the PERT view, assembly tree commands, or flow-related commands.