When learning how to use Autodesk Revit software, people get trained on the basics of how to use sample files, open and save Revit models, as well as several workflows, including how to create projects, walls, floors, roofs; and how to place doors, windows, and curtains. They also learn how to add dimensions and notes and to create sheets.

While appreciating the power of BIM tools, Revit users see how the software allows them to create accurate and precise designs, easily make changes, and see how the changes affect the building model. In addition, users also begin to discover some inefficiencies. Tasks, some that must be done hundreds of times during a project, need to be done manually. Plus, there are several complexities within the software that make model management time consuming and difficult, including the fact that some elements are not visible in certain views and that deletion sets can contain elements unknown to the user, who are then surprised and annoyed when they discover the elements are gone. 

Instead of investing in tackling the inefficiencies themselves, Autodesk turns to trusted partners to develop Revit plugins. They created the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) for software developers who want to develop tools that extend Autodesk products and technologies. ADN members are full-time professional software developers working with Autodesk technologies that can access Autodesk desktop software and get one-on-one direct support for software development based on virtually all Autodesk desktop technologies. They can also access confidential Autodesk information on technology futures, beta software, and basic marketing benefits. 

Ideate Software – An Autodesk Authorized Developer and Member of the Autodesk Developer Network

Since launching our first Autodesk Revit Plugin, Ideate Explorer, at Autodesk University in 2008, Ideate Software has been committed to helping Revit users unlock advanced functionality and efficiency in their BIM designs. Today, our suite of products includes five Revit plugins, and one of them—IdeateApps —is comprised of 10 different tools. We developed each of our BIM tools to address specific, persistent problems in architecture, engineering, construction, and owner-operator workflows by giving Revit users unprecedented access to and control over the data in their models. In addition to our five Revit plugins, we developed Ideate Automation to run time-intensive BIM tasks in the background, freeing staff to do more meaningful work. 

Ideate Explorer - Considered by many firms worldwide the indispensable tool to investigate, clean-up, and manage the Revit building model, Ideate Explorer users easily search for, filter, quantify, index, and select all Revit model elements, even ‘missing’ and hard-to-find ones, and make selections based on filters or data sets.

It comes with four tools that increase its power: 

• Warnings Manager - Review and manage Revit warnings
• Navigate - Navigate through view-based elements within Revit—legends, schedules, sheets, and views—and quickly customize the browsing experience
• Query - Search on parameters, such as elements assigned a certain size or modeled as in-place families, sheets based on Issuance numbers, and dimensions that have been overridden
• Filters - Filter Revit model elements based on your specified parametric conditions

Ideate BIMLink – The powerful filtering and sorting options in Ideate BIMLink are used to manage and extract Revit data. Used to easily edit and update vast amounts of Revit data using Microsoft Excel, users can use the hundreds of library links included with Ideate BIMLink to immediately access the Revit data required. In addition to robust editing, users can create many Revit elements as well as manage workflows that just aren’t easy or even possible within standard Revit. For example, with Ideate BIMLink, users can: 

• Swap Revit elements
• Manage Revit Parameters
• Rename Revit elements
• Manage Revit Sheet Revision Workflows and Sheet/View Sets

Ideate Sticky – Originally developed to address customer comments, Ideate Sticky first allowed users to create and format tabular text in an Excel spreadsheet and then “stick” that spreadsheet on a Revit sheet as a Revit schedule. As we do with all products, we made meaningful updates to Ideate Sticky every year. Today, Ideate Sticky is used to:

• Link Microsoft Excel, Word, and PDF documents into Revit projects
• Link multi-paged documents at once
• Link Excel spreadsheets to Revit files as images or native Revit schedule data

Ideate StyleManager – Launched in 2019 to address challenges with Revit styles that arise when users import content, Ideate StyleManager simplifies the style management process which in Revit can be time consuming and risky. This powerful Revit plugin is used to:

• Safely delete styles that can’t be easily deleted or purged in Revit software
• Merge non-standard styles into standard styles
• Analyze style usage to understand the scope of a deletion
• Clean up Object Styles, Line Styles, Line Patterns, Fill Patterns, Materials, Material Appearance Assets, View Filters, Templates, and Scope Boxes
• Understand which views use View Filters

IdeateApps – This collection of tools launched in the summer of 2016 with:

• Ideate ReNumber to quickly update element numbers and names
• Ideate XRay to determine the cause of element visibility issues and fix the problems
• Ideate SmartDelete to understand and edit elements that will be deleted along with a selected element 
• Ideate QuickSelect to view all instances of difficult-to-find items

Within one year, we added four more tools:

• Ideate SpellCheck to check open sheets and views, sheets in a sheet list and all schedules
• Ideate SheetManager to filter sheet and view lists, create sheets, and place views onto sheets
• Ideate Clone to duplicate Sheets and manage viewports on those Sheets as well as to match title block family and parameters, sheet parameters and browser file location
• Ideate Align to align plan views in a set so they synchronize perfectly across all sheets

In 2018, we added:

• Ideate ViewCreator to batch-create multiple Revit views while complying with company BIM standards

And in 2022, we added:

• Ideate Annotate to ensure the legibility of tags, text, dimensions, and other annotative elements

Ideate Automation – Launched in 2020, this scripting solution runs time-intensive BIM tasks in the background while your staff does more meaningful work. Use Ideate Automation to:

• Open large Autodesk Revit files for data extraction
• Export key Revit model health data
• Create document issue records
• Prepare COBie data drops
• Generate quantity take-off data
• Generate regular, automated PDF exports
• Deliver CSV reports on key Revit family and project metrics
• Batch-export Revit sheets and/or views to DWG file format

Stay Connected

Learn more about our top Revit addons.

Check us out on X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

If you have any questions, reach out to us. We are here to help you understand and use our Revit plugin solutions. 
 

 

As the sponsor of the evening drinks reception at the upcoming Women in BIM Conference in London, we are looking forward to talking with fellow BIM enthusiasts in a fun and casual environment. 

• Date: Wednesday, November 22
• Event Time: 8:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
• Drink Reception Time: 4:40 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
• Place: The View, United Kingdom

After a full day of hearing influential speakers share their insights and experiences on the people, projects, and processes driving the digital future of the built environment, please stop by the reception for some refreshments, to revisit highlights of the day with peers, and to meet our UK/EMEA Customer Success Manager Steve Deadman, and our UK/EMEA Territory Lead Nick Johns.

We are proud of our association with Women in BIM, a global non-profit organization with a vision to support, empower, and celebrate female BIM and digital construction professionals. During the past 12 months, the organization has seen enormous growth in activities, reinforcing the importance of the group and its people in influencing diversity and inclusion across the construction industry.

Learn more about the conference. In addition to sponsoring the drink reception at the London conference, we are also sponsoring the 11-08-23 WIB conference in Australia.

Check out our Events page for more opportunities to meet with our team online or in person.

We were proud to be a Gold Sponsor of the 2023 BIM Coordinators Summit, which took place virtually on September 6 and 7 and live in Dublin, Ireland on September 7. This event brought together BIM professionals to share knowledge and celebrate advances in digital innovation in the architecture, engineering, and construction industries.

Our President Bob Palioca, Director of Software Development Glynnis Patterson, UK/EMEA Territory Lead Nick Johns, and UK/EMEA Customer Success Manager Steve Deadman visited with customers and other BIM enthusiasts from a number of locations, including India, Morocco, Egypt, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. Our team enjoyed learning about challenges Revit users face and demonstrating how our add-ins can address those challenges. 

Nick Johns and Steve Deadman at the Ideate Software booth

In addition to meeting people at our booth, Steve led a 20-minute high-level discussion on Revit model health along with Neil Carter of Corstorphine and Wright, an award-winning architectural practice. The presentation, called, “Quality Control and Best Practices for Successful Project Delivery,” covered:

• The importance of addressing quality and health concerns in your models and adding periodic health checks as part of your BIM Execution Plans
• Key areas that should be included as part of a periodic quality and health checks
• The issues that can affect model health
• How Ideate Software for Revit products can be used as part of Quality control and Data checks

Check out our Events page for more opportunities to meet with our team online or in person.

Manufacturer’s details, general notes, specifications, and other types of non-BIM data are critical to project success, but those items don’t always have a direct relationship with an element in a Revit model. How can you easily disseminate them to the Revit project team members? 

With Ideate Sticky!

We introduced Ideate Sticky in 2015 to link Excel spreadsheets to Revit projects as simple Revit table schedules. Over the past eight years, we have added many new features, and now users can create and place “Stickies” within a Revit project that represent the contents of a Microsoft Word, Excel, or Adobe PDF files. Ideate Sticky now also supports Absolute paths, Relative paths, and Autodesk Cloud locations for data locations.

Sticky Schedules vs. Sticky Images

Stickies created and placed into projects as native Revit Schedule elements offer several benefits and a few limitations. When you create a new Sticky schedule, you create a new Generic Model Schedule that has header text but no body text. Learn more 

We recommend Sticky images when the size of the Excel columns and rows is important, because they offer greater visual fidelity of documents that include long pieces of text or many images. Learn more

For details and examples, read this blog post. 

It’s Easy to Create Stickies

With our intuitive user interface, you’ll be a pro at creating Stickies in no time. Here are the steps:

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Select a Source File
    
   • Open the sheet or view where you want to place the Sticky
   • Launch Ideate Sticky
   • Stay on the default Excel (Schedules) tab to create a Sticky Schedule. If you want to create a Sticky image, click on the  Word, PDF, Excel (Images) tab
   • Click Create in the lower left-hand corner (Item 2 in the image above)
     • For Schedules, pick the “...” button by the Source box at the top (Item 3 in the image above) select a file to import by 
     • For Images, select the desired source file
        
2. Specify the Source Details
    
   • Schedules
     • Identify the worksheet the Excel file that contains the data to import (Item 4 in the image above)
     • Define the area to be imported in the worksheet by selecting the region (Item 5 in the image above)
     • The Sticky name will be displayed in the Project Browser under the Schedule folder (Item 6 in the image above). Review the name for accuracy
     • Select OK (Item 7 in the image above)
     • Review Auto-update options. Learn more by reading Update the Sticky in Revit Projects with Ideate Sticky
        
   • Images
     You can specify the Excel source documents by selecting the worksheet regions in any worksheet as well as the DPI value. The Name column represents the available regions that include saved Print Areas and named regions. View and edit the ranges in Excel from the Formulas>Name Manager dialog.
     
     
      
   • Color Overrides:
     
     Image Stickies can be created with a Color, Grayscale, or Black and White override. Black and white will take precedence over the drop-down selected when creating the Image Sticky. Learn more by reading this blog post. 
      
   • DPI Overrides and Transparency:
     
     NOTE: Higher dots per inch values will result in larger image files, which could affect the Revit model size.

Want to learn more about Ideate Sticky? Check out our Help files and our Video Library.

 

 

We add new features, and you just ask for more. (Thanks!)

In July of 2013 we created an easy way for Ideate BIMLink users to assign sheets to their respective revisions or issuances in: Ideate BIMLink for Revit 2014 Conquers Revisions!

The response was swift, "Thanks for saving me hours of time, but NOW I need help with this other Revit revision nonsense. I'm required to manage a complete list of all revisions for all sheets as a record, with the list of sheets as the rows, the list of revision dates as the columns, and, this is the kicker, the per sheet number of the revision within each corresponding cell, as shown."

Typical Document Issue Record with Revit Sheet and Revision Data.

We like it when you ask us to solve soul-sucking problems such as this. So here's your solution:

Ideate BIMLink and Document Issue and Revision Records

Existing Ideate BIMLink customers should contact [email protected] to request a copy of the Excel macro template used in this video.

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About the Author

Glynnis Patterson, NCARB - Director of Software Development
Glynnis is a Registered Architect and has worked within the BIM industry since 1998. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, she has worked as an architect, educator and construction site manager. Glynnis is currently the Director of Software Development Services at Ideate, Inc. and continues to work with AEC clients worldwide, developing, and consulting on solutions to Building Information Modeling challenges. In her spare time Glynnis does volunteer work for eclcofnj.org and growitgreenmorristown.org @GVPinNJ