It was Parkin’s goal of efficiently delivering innovative designs that led them to Ideate Software. Their initial need was for a tool that could move data from Revit to Excel for fast and accurate editing, and then push the updated data back into the Revit model. 

“In 2012, we were using a simple application to copy data from a Revit file into Excel,” said Oscar. “It worked, but it crashed a lot. Constantly relaunching the program was frustrating and time consuming, so our team did some research to find a better, more efficient solution.”

While browsing the internet, they came across Ideate BIMLink, which had the functionality needed and had received positive feedback from customers (See blog post from 2011 – Real ROI for Revit Projects: Ideate BIMLink Survey Results). They reached out to Ideate Software, got a demonstration of the software, and secured licenses for their team of BIM managers and BIM coordinators.  

“The team quickly learned how to address our immediate need, which was to set up new models with functional project data to expedite the planning process,” said Oscar. “We used Ideate BIMLink to help create the Rooms in Revit with all the information from the Functional Program, like functional location, program number, and name. This way the model would be ready for the planners to do their job.”

Ideate BIMLink proved to be easy to use and a time saver, so the Parkin team started using it to streamline other workflows. Here are a few examples of time-consuming and error-prone manual workflows that Parkin now performs with Ideate BIMLink: 

1. Transferring parameter values to Doors from their hosts (Fire Rating, Wall Types, etc.) 
2. Managing FF&E (Equipment) ID information (Number and Name) 
3. Managing Room Data 

In addition to expanding their use of Ideate BIMLink, Parkin also expanded its use of Ideate Software products. Here are a few ways they streamline Revit data management tasks with our tools:

Ideate Explorer – “We use Ideate Explorer every day for quality control activities,” said Oscar. “The search capabilities in Revit are very limited, but with Ideate Explorer and its Query tool, we can find any element in the model, select it, locate it within the model, browse through its properties, identify issues, and more. This saves us a lot of time and helps us deliver clean models and accurate documentation to our clients.”

Ideate Sticky – Parkin uses Ideate Sticky to place schedules not done in Revit onto Revit files. “For example, we use Excel to manage code requirement data and use Ideate Sticky to live-link the Excel spreadsheet to our Revit file,” said Oscar. “Now our team doesn’t spend time verifying that the information they have is correct; they know it is.”