1. Your engineer/architect has modeled your new facility in Revit and the building is done
2. Get your hands on the Building model, you own it, right?
3. Open up Revit
4. You launch Ideate BIMLink and you export the COBie_Type and COBie_Components to an Excel file. Whether you intend to do COBie or not these links are a great way to quickly get all of the asset list that you need to get started.
   

5. If your budget permitted, you required the model to be updated to reflect as-built conditions. Congratulations, you get to skip ahead to Step 7.
6. If the model does not reflect the as-built conditions then you should pay your architect and engineers to fill out the Excel files from step 4 above or have your own staff fill out any missing info. This can be done with a tablet as outlined in this earlier post.
7. Congratulations, you now you have a complete list of all the building assets for use in managing the building's maintenance and operations. That was easy!

This post was originally published on the Ideate Solutions Blog 9.25.2013

 

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 ECLC of NJ and Grow it Green Morristown. Follow Glynnis on Twitter.

Autodesk recently updated their Revit Model Performance Technical Note for version 2014. This document contains a wealth of information related to optimizing Revit files and is highly recommended for all BIM Managers who are using Revit. Here's just one example, that can be found under the "Revit Model Optimization and Best Practices" section.

Example: Found under the "Revit Model Optimization and Best Practices" section[/caption] Ideate Explorer for Revit can be used to find Arrays and other problem areas, as shown.

Use Ideate Explorer to select all your Arrays at once and then use the ungroup option as recommended by Autodesk for improved performance. You can find "Revit 2014 Model Performance Technical Note" and other Revit-related white papers on our website.

About the Author

Glynnis Patterson, NCARB - Director of Software Development Glynnis is a Registered Architect and has worked with 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 across the nation, developing, and implementing best practices solutions. In her spare time Glynnis does volunteer work and builds Lego projects. @GVPinNJ

We've had many Ideate BIMLink customers request access to the Revisions on Sheet properties. These properties allow the project team to identify, on a per sheet basis, whether the sheet is part of a particular issuance (Bid Set, Owner Review, Request for Information, Addendum, etc.). Without Ideate BIMLink using this Revit feature requires that the user select each Sheet and then pick to the "Revisions on Sheet" button and then check the box next to the relevant Revision Sequence - very tedious. View here!

With Ideate BIMLink for Revit 2014.1 we now have access to the revision sequences so that all the sheets can be edited quickly, outside of the Revit environment, saving time and reducing liability. See how: Download the latest version of Ideate BIMLink (note this feature is for 2014 only).

About the Author

Glynnis Patterson, NCARB - Director of Software Development
Glynnis is a Registered Architect and has worked with 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 across the nation, developing, and implementing best practices solutions. In her spare time Glynnis does volunteer work and builds Lego projects. @GVPinNJ

Being able to provide early, high-quality cost estimates for Building Information Models (BIM) is an important aspect of integrated project delivery and is an invaluable service being offered by tech-saavy virtual design and construction firms.

Within the Revit model environment most cost estimating hinges upon the use of the Assembly Code field as the database "key" that connects the Revit model to the cost estimate, but managing that data can be cumbersome and up until now, an in-depth knowledge of Revit has been a requirement to manage this data.

With Ideate BIMLink access to this information is via Excel, so your cost estimating team can simply fill out the correct Assembly Code values in the spreadsheet and then return the file to the design team and have them import the assembly codes back into the Revit model objects. See how:

If you are using the assembly code data to facilitate your construction estimating (or specification processes) then using Ideate BIMLink to edit this data will return these benefits: Watch Video Here!

• You will save time because editing the information within Excel is significantly faster than within Revit, which does not allow copy/paste or other advanced editing methods.
• You will also save time by editing all the information from a single source.  In Revit, multi-category schedule excludes walls, floors, ceilings, and other system family objects, so multiple exports are required. With Ideate BIMLink the mulit-category method extracts all the model data, as well as Design Option and Phasing information that may be crucial to the estimate.
• Ideate BIMLink lets you edit the data in Excel, so you'll eliminate the need to train your estimators or specifiers on how to use Revit.

Having the one-to-one correspondence between your BIM data and your cost estimating is essential to stay on top of the game. Use Ideate BIMLink to quickly and easily manage your cost estimating data.

About the Author

Glynnis Patterson, NCARB - Director of Software Development Glynnis is a Registered Architect and has worked with 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 across the nation, developing, and implementing best practices solutions. In her spare time Glynnis does volunteer work and builds Lego projects. @GVPinNJ

Ideate Software is pleased to show a greatly improved workflow for data management with Ideate BIMLink. In addition to being able to push and pull data from a Revit Building Information Model (BIM) to a regular Excel spreadsheet, you can host the sheet on Google Docs and use Google Sheet to provide worldwide simultaneous access to the sheet BIM data. Anyone can use the Google Doc App or a link to access the sheet collaboratively and simultaneously and then with the use of Ideate BIMLink, can publish that same information back to the Revit model.

The benefits of this realtime collaboration in the cloud include a security and notification system, so that you can control who has access to the sheet and whether they can review, comment or edit. The version control features allow for historic rollbacks to previous versions.

Take your Revit data to the cloud with Ideate BIMLink and Google Sheet.

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This post was originally published on the Ideate Solutions Blog 07.25.2013