A lot of work has gone into making 3DSMAX more compatible with other design applications - Inventor and Revit being notable examples. This allows using the appropriate software for design work, and using 3DSMAX as a "front end" for high-end visualization work rather than attempting a full-blown rendering/animation interface inside each product. I'd like to see this effort continued with the Navisworks Simulate/Manage products for similar purposes. One of the end goals would be to use Navisworks as a "pre-vis" package for large projects, such as industrial facilities or building complexes, before committing to the expense of a high-end 3DSMAX output.
There's a number of highly useful features found in Navisworks which are not present in other programs; for the purposes of this Idea the most important are federated models and the Timeliner feature.
Navisworks products allow for a wide range of 3D formats to be viewed together, without needing the originating software, to create an overall "federated" model with properties appropriate to the objects for selection and filtering. Work has been done to reference Navisworks content back into other programs (Revit, AutoCAD/verticals, ReCap). It would be useful to apply this to streamline working with Navisworks content in 3DSMAX. There is something of a round-about method of exporting to FBX, then importing into 3DSMAX, but it has limitations.
The Navisworks Timeliner allows for a Gantt chart (from Microsoft Project, or manually created) to control some basic appearances based on a project schedule. In addition to reading the model content, being able to read the Timeliner information from a Navisworks file would be useful. One of the reasons for doing this and not reading a project schedule directly in 3DSMAX, is quickly apply scheduling information based on object properties.
