3D has made it possible to view the design of a complete structure, its sections, and systems, and to rotate them all from the comfort of a keyboard. This leaves less to the imagination during the review process and construction. Add a sophisticated Gantt chart schedule and you can know a lot about how a project is going to come together. If progress stopped right there, we’d have a level of technology whose capabilities will intrigue us for a long time. But, it hasn’t. 3D is merging with the final dimension—time—in a way that will make the construction of complex, time sensitive projects more predictable. We’re entering the era of 4D.

To understand how 4D works, imagine if you could travel forward into time and set up a camera at a job site that takes a picture each day, from multiple perspectives, of a project being constructed. Impose on each frame a readout of the day the shot was taken, make each element of the construction clickable and data-rich, and you will have an idea of what 4D portrays—before construction even starts. Basically, it is an “animated,” intelligent sequence of a virtual project being constructed. Read more