Edit Revit Property and Cell Units via Excel with Ideate BIMLink

Edit Revit Property and Cell Units via Excel with Ideate BIMLink

Default Units

Ideate BIMLink exports numeric Revit property values to Excel using the default units defined within Revit.  If the default unit in Revit is set to feet and fractional inches, Ideate BIMLink will export the value as a decimal value with three places. Numerical values imported from Excel are also interpreted as having the default units defined in Revit.

See Revit menu: Manage tab ►Settings panel ► (Project Units) 

NOTE:  Revit's Properties palette does NOT use the unit format specified within Project Units. It has its own, hard-wired format.


Imperial Units - Fractional Inches

Excel does not support imperial format for length values in the same way that Revit does, with both the feet and inches syntax.  Therefore, when dealing with Imperial length units, feet and fractional inches are displayed as decimal feet, and fraction inches are displayed as decimal inches. Even though the values are exported using numerical values, for importing purposes, these number formats are acceptable:  6'1 or 73" or 6'-1".

Formatting Dates

Excel will try to automatically convert certain types of text string data into the Date format if an edit is made.  For example if you type in 3-03-12 it will change the Cell format from "General" to "Date" and will also change the underlying cell value.  Unfortunately this also alters how the information is imported back into Revit via Ideate BIMLink.  In these situations there are two recommended workarounds.

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