March

11

2022

Every day, our Ideate Software Support team fields all types of questions from AECO professionals all around the world. You can review some of these recent questions and answers via our Ideate Software Support Series blog category.

Recently, an Ideate Software customer asked us about the seemingly random colors that appear on Revit definitions within the Ideate StyleManager dialog. What do they mean? Definitions, such as Fill Patterns, assigned the same color are considered duplicates. You can more easily understand the color groupings if you select “Isolate Duplicates” as an option before you analyze.

Colors assigned for duplicate definitions with Ideate StyleManager for Revit
Colors will be assigned for duplicate definitions.

Select "Isolate Duplicates" to group and color code duplicates 
Revit elements will be grouped together and color coded together to indicate they are duplicates if the “Isolate Duplicates” option is selected. 

After a quick review of the same color combinations and naming, you may realize that a merge is required. As an example, it’s very easy to see that “diagonal up small” and “Diagonal up-small” are the SAME definitions with just different spelling and capitalization.

Check Duplicate Definitions when merging to limit list to duplicates
By checking the “Duplicate Definitions” option when you are merging, it will limit the available list to just those definitions that are considered duplicates.  This can make merging one definition into another MUCH easier to find.

If you have “Isolate Duplicates” still selected after completing the Merge operation, don’t be surprised that you can’t see your definition listed in the Ideate StyleManager dialog anymore. Since it’s not a duplicate definition anymore, you will have to uncheck that option to see the definition. For instance, you might want to now rename “Diagonal up-small” to something else.

After correcting duplicates, rename to standards

Now that we don’t have any duplicate definitions for Diagonal up-small, we can rename it to standards.

The colors within Ideate StyleManager are a quick way to review duplicate definitions and start to clean up your Revit model to match your company standards.

If you have any comments on how we can improve our user interfaces, please let us know! Just send an email to [email protected].

This post is part of a series of real questions posed to our Support team and our solutions. View more


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.

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In case you missed them, here are some other topics covered recently in our Support blog posts:

  1. Valentine Secrets Revealed for the Ideate BIMLink User Interface – Posted February 14, 2022, this article features our response to a customer who asked if Ideate BIMLink for Revit has the ability to apply some minor changes to Revit models without having to send the information to Excel and then import those changes back into the model. It does! In fact, this “inline editing” ability has been available within the Ideate BIMLink user interface for several years. Read the post for step-by-step instructions. 
     
  2. How do I load an existing Ideate BIMLink link definition? – Posted January 20, 2022, this article provides our detailed response to a longtime customer who contacted us about the ability to load an existing link definition, as it used to be available on the primary Ideate BIMLink dialog as a pull-down option. We shared that, in order to streamline the creation of NEW Ideate BIMLink link definitions, we moved the ability to load links under the NEW button. Read more in the article and get more information about loading link definitions via this Ideate BIMLink Help article.  
     
  3. How do I manage Revit health metrics and deploy Revit Warning standards for my company? – Live on our website starting on December 27, 2021, this blog post provides answers to the many customers managing Revit warnings data with Ideate Explorer, one of our Revit addin tool. The post details how to assign rankings to warnings, so you can focus your time on those most critical to your business. Read the related online Help topic, Deploying Warnings Standards to learn how to set up and deploy company standards that related to this Revit model health metric.
     
  4. Using Ideate BIMLink to Type Swap Revit Families While Preserving Instance Parameter Data – Posted on November 29, 2021, this blog post addresses an issue that customers reported: Some parameter data did not transfer when they type swapped old Revit families with newer ones with the same parameter data. We show how using Ideate BIMLink to type swap families and map parameter values to the new families is easier, more accurate, and takes a lot less time. 

Ideate Software is committed to helping customers get a strong return on their investment in our Revit plug-in tools. In addition to blog posts, we have short how-to videos, Help files, and more available 24/7 on our website. Our Support Team is also here to help. 

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