Activity Network Diagram

Sometimes it’s the easiest way to figure out network logic. There are issues with P6’s implementation of it, that restricts its usefulness. You can only have one box colour per layout. You can’t, say, colour Electrical activities green, and Mechanical yellow, and then you can group and sort in another characteristic, perhaps location. Or colour by system, and group by location. And you can’t do a proper time-scaled network diagram, without invoking the offline ‘Visualiser’ bolt-on. Visualiser is great for time-scaled network diagrams but it is not an interactive interface to the data, the relationship lines are very easy to follow compared to P6, but you can’t edit them. If you look at a simple TSLD (Time scaled logic diagram) in Visualizer, set the relationship lines to ‘on’ and draw the output. With a few changes to the huge layout options, I soon have a TLSD that I would want P6 to do in its layouts, so I can edit in this view.  

So, my answer is I would like to have a P6 Layout that had columns in the left-hand side, and a time-scaled logic diagram on the right. that shows as Visualizer does the Lag and type if I want (I do).

The vanilla network diagram in P6 is ok for debugging, but I usually use it in segments with Trace Logic as the bottom layout, where the ‘click-through’ functionality is very friendly.

Hi David,

Thanks for your reply. As for the Time scaled logic diagram, I can't see any real difference from what can be drawn using a standard Gantt Chart view, improved with a few tweaks and bars added for information.

Much Appreciated,

Rod

Hi Rodney,

I often used Activity Network for presentation as it group by WBS to show the relationship within the WBS selected vs Gantt Chart. It is also very useful when checking the logic of the network by showing the Top View as Activity Network and the Bottom View is the Logic Trace. When selecting the WBS level on the left will give you the Activity Network diagram and when selecting the activity box the bottom will show the rest of the logic within the WBS selected or not.