Are you looking to reduce the time you spend on Revit model management? Start using Ideate BIMLink + Ideate Automation, Ideate Explorer and Ideate StyleManager to address your Revit model’s health and prevent:

• Slowness during opening, closing and while working in models
• Crashing
• “Save” issues
• Printing and exporting problems
• Model upgrade difficulties
• Noncompliance with company standards

With Ideate BIMLink, you can push large amounts of model health check and QA/QC-related data from your Revit model into Microsoft Excel for review in Excel and Power BI. 

Using Ideate Automation, you can export large amounts of data from multiple Revit files to Excel without being present, so you can run it overnight and the next day, your data will be ready for review. 

Use Ideate Explorer for on-demand reviews of QA/QC tasks such as finding and removing CAD imports, addressing group usage and querying a selection of elements to determine if they are pinned, flipped, modeled as in-place families and so much more. Going a step further, use features built into Ideate Explorer to help manage and address warnings, ensuring models are in good health.

Finally, with Ideate StyleManager, dive deeply into projects, templates and families for usage of styles, such as object styles, line patterns, fill patterns, materials, fonts, text and much more, to determine usage and if needed, remove unused styles and merge and purge unwanted styles, ensuring that Revit projects, templates, and families are lean, healthy, and in compliance with standards.

Here’s a link to a recording of our recent webinar in which we highlighted the importance of addressing Revit model health and demonstrated how our tools make the process easy and accurate.

Browse our website for more information on our Revit productivity tools. Give them a try with a free trial version, or subscribe today. 

About the Author

Sash Kazeminejad - AIA, LEED AP - Customer Success Manager
Sash earned his Master of Architecture from Montana State University and is a California registered architect, LEED Accredited Professional. He has extensive experience in project management; BIM management; design for architectural firms in California, Montana, and Oregon; and leading classroom and online BIM training. He provides consulting, sales, support, and training solutions to AECO customers around the globe. Find Sash on LinkedIn.

For those of you who are new to Ideate Software or need a refresher course on the capabilities our products, this webinar recording is for you. Spend one hour watching to get a high-level overview of all Ideate Software solutions and how they relate to BIM managers and BIM management.

• Ideate BIMLink – The industry standard for exporting information from a Revit model to Microsoft Excel, so you can modify the data and import it back into Revit to update the model
  • Ideate Automation for Ideate BIMLink – Script and run Ideate BIMLink on multiple models during non-business hours, so data is in Excel spreadsheets when you return
• Ideate Sticky – Live-link Excel data as schedules or Word, Excel and PDFs as images in your Revit projects, so they automatically update when changes are made to the original documents
• Ideate Explorer – See every element and instance of every element in the Revit model, so you can easily select and swap elements, audit the project, and review and manage warnings
• Ideate StyleManager – Review styles (e.g., object styles, line styles, fonts, and dimensions), so you can merge and purge unwanted styles and delete those not being used
• IdeateApps – Decrease the time spent on common Revit tasks and increase the accuracy of BIM data in a Revit model with these nine focus-driven tools

Watch the recording and share it with others who will benefit from its content.

 
This webinar was presented in three regions over a two-day period. This recording is of the presentation made in the Americas region. The content is the same as the other presentations, except for the specific attendee questions asked during the webinar.

Browse our website for more information on our Revit productivity tools. Give them a try with a free trial version, or subscribe today. 
 

About the Author

Richard W. Taylor, Associate AIA – Technical Evangelist 
Richard has more than 30 years of experience working for companies that develop architectural and engineering software solutions, such as Intergraph, Bentley, and Autodesk. He has over 20 years of Revit experience, and he was part of the original development of Revit while at Revit Technology Corporation. He worked for 12 years at Autodesk, where he presented, taught, and worked to improve features in Revit. Richard holds both a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies and Master of Architecture from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. As Technical Evangelist, Richard works with AECO clients worldwide, developing and consulting on BIM solutions. Find Richard on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Object styles subcategories. Line patterns. Fill patterns. Text notes. Fonts. Dimensions. Arrowheads. 

These are just some of the many types of Revit styles used to maintain consistency in BIM models. Managing styles is important to:

• Streamline model and family content
  • Keep file size to a minimum
  • Navigate Revit models more easily
  • Make informed decisions on which Styles to use
     
• Improve file performance
  • Prevent file bloat
  • Open, save and reload latest faster
     
• Keep project and company standards in alignment

Unfortunately, the style management process within Revit can be time consuming and difficult to manage manually. Fortunately, it’s easy with Ideate StyleManager.

Here’s a link to the recording of our webinar where I discuss and demonstrate the power of Ideate StyleManager. 

This session was also presented in Asia Pacific and European time zones on April 6 and April 7. The content of this North American recording is the same except for the specific attendee questions asked during the webinar.

Interested in learning more? Visit the Ideate StyleManager section of our website. When you’re ready, download a free trial version or subscribe online. 

About the Author

Sash Kazeminejad - AIA, LEED AP - Customer Success Manager
Sash earned his Master of Architecture from Montana State University and is a California registered architect, LEED Accredited Professional. He has extensive experience in project management; BIM management; design for architectural firms in California, Montana, and Oregon; and leading classroom and online BIM training. He provides consulting, sales, support, and training solutions to AECO customers around the globe. Find Sash on LinkedIn.

Every day, our Ideate Software Support team fields all types of questions from AECO professionals all around the world. Questions about simplifying the process of creating views are fairly common, so in this post, I’ll show you some of the ways Ideate ViewCreator makes the process fast and easy.

Ideate ViewCreator has the power to efficiently copy plan views to other levels while maintaining settings such as view template assignment, scope box setting and even custom parameters that are often used to help sort views within the Project Browser. In addition, Ideate ViewCreator can assist users by bulk-duplicating views to other phases or to create working views. Like the Plans to Levels method, users can assign view templates, scope boxes and so much more. The possibilities are endless!

While Ideate ViewCreator allows users to create customized rules to meet their needs, Ideate ViewCreator also ships with many pre-configured rules as well. Many of these rules already meet and address the needs of many customers, as seen here:

 
For those interested in copying plan and ceiling plans up to multiple levels, consider using a special rule called *LEVEL, highlighted in the following image:

 
The *LEVEL rule has a special algorithm that can predict how to match the intended naming convention of selected views so they can be copied up to other levels while adhering to the naming conventions. 

For example, let us assume you are working on a project with eight levels (LEVEL 1, LEVEL 2, LEVEL 3, etc.) and you have the need for floor and ceiling plans for those levels. Let us also assume you have already created a LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL FLOOR PLAN and LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL CEILING PLAN with the correct View Template, scope box, view organization parameters, etc. already assigned. If your views and levels have the same naming conventions, such as LEVEL 1 as the level name and LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL FLOOR PLAN for the View name, then the *LEVEL rule in Ideate ViewCreator should be able to predict how to copy those plans to the other levels while adhering to the naming standards. 

The advantage of using the *LEVEL rule is that you can quickly bulk create views of different types (Floor Plan, Ceiling Plan, Structural Plan) quickly and efficiently with the same settings that were applied to the views that you copied.

In the following image, you can see how we copied the LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL FLOOR PLAN and LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL CEILING PLAN to LEVEL 2, LEVEL 3, on up to LEVEL 8. Looking at the New View column, you can see that the naming conventions match the copied views from the Original View column, which is exactly what we wanted to. It is worth noting that the *LEVEL rule works best when the Level name and view names use the same naming conventions.

 
There may be times in which the *LEVEL rule algorithm cannot predict the New View name as intended. This situation usually happens when the level name and Original View names differ slightly. In the following image, you can see that the New Level (the name of the level you want to copy to) is called LEVEL 2, but the Original View name has LEVEL 01 in it. 

In this case, you have a couple of options. The first option would be to review your view names and correct them so that the levels and views have the same naming convention, i.e., LEVEL 1 and LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL PLAN, not LEVEL 1 and LEVEL 01 MECHANICAL PLAN. Your other option would be to use the Find and Replace in Ideate ViewCreator to correct the new view name so you can proceed with creating the views.

In summary, if you are looking to bulk create many plan views easily and efficiently, consider using the *LEVEL rule. Keep in mind that this rule works best when the level name and view names have matching information. This will help the algorithm to predict how the rest of the view names should match.

Related topics:

• Ideate ViewCreator Help Page
• Copy Views to a Design Option using Ideate ViewCreator
• Create Sector Plans with Ideate ViewCreator

Browse our website for more information on our Revit productivity tools. Give them a try with a free trial version, or subscribe today. 

About the Author

Sash Kazeminejad - AIA, LEED AP - Customer Success Manager
Sash earned his Master of Architecture from Montana State University and is a California registered architect, LEED Accredited Professional. He has extensive experience in project management; BIM management; design for architectural firms in California, Montana, and Oregon; and leading classroom and online BIM training. He provides consulting, sales, support, and training solutions to AECO customers around the globe. Find Sash on LinkedIn.

Thank you to everyone who participated our March online user group meetings. The workflows shared by our guest speakers as well as the discussions and questions from attendees made for informative meetings that we hope delivered value to everyone.

Although you may have attended the meeting scheduled for your local region, you may want to listen to the others, because each featured different guest speakers and Q&A sessions. 

Here are links to each of the recordings and a few details of the speakers and the topics covered:

Recording of Americas User Group Meeting

Guest Speakers

Thesla Collier
Associate BIM Manager
Gensler 
Thesla shared some of her favorite tips to using Ideate Software applications.

Sara Troy
Director of Operations
Modulus Consulting
Sara presented a creative Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Sticky workflow that Modulus developed to manage municipal grading calculation requirements.

Jan Sako
Support and QA Manager
Ideate Software
Jan talked about the benefits of Ideate Installer.

Recording of APAC User Group Meeting 

Guest Speakers

Holger DeGroot
CEO & Founder
Modmation
Holger showcased some tips for managing warnings to ensure Revit model health with Ideate Explorer.

Tang MinJin
Executive BIM Manager
Surbana Jurong 
Tang demonstrated how Surbana Jurong automated the creation of 300+ sheers with Ideate BIMLink.

Recording of EMEA User Group Meeting

Guest Speakers

Neil Rooney
Senior Medical Facility Design Specialist
Elekta
Neil shared some tips for converting a Revit project from English into other languages.

Paul Duggleby
Senior Associate
HOK 
Paul discussed how he uses Ideate Explorer to audit his Revit projects at HOK.

Jan Sako
Support and QA Manager
Ideate Software
Jan talked about the benefits of Ideate Installer.

Plans for our next online user group meetings are well underway. Check out our Events page for dates and times and register today!

If you are interested in being a guest presenter, please contact Richard Taylor.