Believe it or not, the first release of Ideate Explorer was over 10 years ago at Autodesk University 2008.
In 2006, Ideate Software’s president Bob Palioca challenged me to “do something interesting” using the still-new Revit API development platform. Thanks to Bob’s vision and support, that “do something interesting” has grown into Ideate Software’s current offering of a dozen (and growing) Revit tools.
Then… Ideate Explorer 2009
…and now! Ideate Explorer 2019
Ideate Explorer was born around 2007 in brainstorms between some of our early partners (with a special shout out to our friend Mario Guttman, then at HOK) and me. The germ of the originating idea was an “iTunes-like” explorer for the Revit building information model.
Now over 25 releases later, Ideate Explorer is in the capable hands of our Director of Software Development, Glynnis Patterson, who seeks out the BIM needs of our clients, and the wizardry our Senior Software Developer, Hank DiVincenzo,who plumbs the depths of the Revit building model; Ideate Explorer has +17,000 lines of code and an impressive list of features, including:
- Warning Manager - Review and manage Revit warnings
- Navigate - Navigate through view-based elements: legends, schedules, sheets, and views
- Query - Search for model element on parameters, such as elements assigned a certain size
- Modeless dialog – Click back and forth between Revit, Explorer updates live as project changes
Ideate Explorer is considered by many firms worldwide the indispensable tool to investigate, clean-up, and manage the Revit building model. Its features allow you to 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.
For more information on how to use Ideate Explorer to manage your Revit building information model, visit our comprehensive help files or our informative how-to videos.
Give Ideate Explorer a try with a free trial version or subscribe today.
About the Author
Ben Bishoff, Senior Software Developer
Ben has been a software engineer for over 25 years. With a bachelor’s degree in physics, he has worked at several software companies developing applications for the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries, including Sage Timberline (construction accounting and estimating) and ArchT (architectural drafting for AutoCAD). He also worked at Microsoft creating AEC and other diagramming solutions for Office Visio. Ben has been with Ideate Software for 10 years developing add-ins for Revit, including Ideate Explorer, Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Sticky, and IdeateApps.