All Ideate Software product users can get the improvements made in May 2021 by downloading the latest versions. You can check for updates within the products, go to www.ideatesoftware.com/download or review What’s New in the online Help.    

Below are highlights of the updates. Watch the recording of our recent 30-minute webinar for more details and to see demonstrations.

General

• All products aligned with Revit 2022 and updated for Revit 2019-2022
• All products delivered in Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish
• Most virtualized environments now supported by our new Cloud Networking
• Support for legacy BIM 360 pathing and current Autodesk Construction Cloud pathing

Ideate BIMLink 

• Alternate data key allows for the transfer of data from one project or phase to another
• Edit nested family type parameters

Ideate Sticky 

• Make overlapping images transparent for better viewing 
• Open the source file directly from the Ideate Sticky dialog

Ideate Explorer 

• Removed sketch reference planes
• Integrated selection box and isolate elements
• Added sheet count to views

IdeateApps

• View title placement control on certain tools – Revit 2022 only
• Copy plan views to other plan families
• Alternate view placement for plan-based views
• New checks and improvements to visibility results in Ideate XRay

 
This presentation was made at three different times for the convenience of our customers in various regions around the world. Other than the Q&A, the content was the same in each presentation.  

If you don’t yet have all our products, now is a good time to try them out. We offer free trials, and our current promotion is a six-month subscription to all of them for just US$500. 
 

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.

Every day, our Ideate Software Support team fields all types of questions from AECO professionals all around the world. In this series of support blog posts, we highlight questions and our answers.

I’m a big fan of ice cream! One of my favorite dishes is locally called a Smoosh-In, where several different ice cream flavors or toppings are combined in fun ways. This same concept can be applied to Revit where you need to smoosh several parameters or properties into a single item like a Door Mark.

Here is a recent support question that came from a customer with a specific request. However, it’s a broader question that gets asked in so many different ways by our Ideate Software customers. 

The customer asked: “If I wanted to renumber doors by exporting Door Marks out into Excel, is there a way in Excel to select a large number of fields (Door Mark IDs from one level) and automate the sequential numbering of selected fields with a prefix? For example, I would want to renumber door Marks to follow this naming convention of:

<DoorFunction>-<Level>-DoorNumber>

Example = ID-00-001, ID-00-002 etc.”

Ideate BIMLink excels at this!  (OK, pun intended)

I know that I’ve mentioned this a dozen times, but it’s always good to start with one of our pre-defined Library Link Definitions that you can easily browse to locate. A simple one to use and potentially modify is just called Doors. Notice that it is defined as an Instance link because we want to edit each instance of the Door Mark’s value.

Creating a new Link Definition by browsing the Library Definitions

You will want to be sure to add the properties that you might want to use within the door tag to smoosh together. I just added Assembly Code and Keynote as two property options.

Select from many available properties from Doors, categories and additional properties from the dropdown list.

Once you export the information to Excel, you can use an Excel formula to combine the information. I first might want to create a “scratch” column or temporary workspace to just renumber the doors in a sequential order. That’s what I’ve done with column “I” in the Excel image below. Then I’ve used a formula within the Mark cell to combine Level Name as well as Keynote properties. Of course, keep in mind that your Door Tag family might need to be enlarged to contain the text string. In many cases, you may just have a level prefix such as 01, 02, etc. plus the Door Number, as was requested by this customer. They also wanted the Door Function, which is probably a short code.

(Click image to enlarge)

 
The Excel export from Ideate BIMLink showing the formula definition within cell B2

If you would like to learn now to place From Room data and To Room data within a Door Tag, we have an excellent blog article and video that explain the process, which is similar to the process I outlined above.

For more tips and information, please review the online Help topics for Ideate BIMLink. Our Frequently Asked Questions page is also a good place to start.   

Once you have mastered the property/parameter combinations, I recommend you celebrate with some ice cream, and be sure to combine many flavors together for your own Smoosh-In!

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.

We were pleased to participate in the 06-15-21 webinar hosted by The Architect’s Newspaper. We were so excited to demonstrate how Ideate Software applications can be used during project setup ensuring the minimum project maintenance effort over the life of the project.

Sash Kazeminejad, Customer Success Manager, and Richard Taylor, Technical Evangelist, led discussions and demonstrations on:

• Using Ideate BIMLink to create:
  • New project levels 
  • Unplaced rooms using programing assignments from client requirements contained in Excel
  • Revit sheets by using existing information from an Excel list of required sheets 
     
• Using tools within the IdeateApps collection to create:
  • Project views with their correct view properties using Ideate ViewCreator 
  • Cartoon sheet sets using Ideate SheetManager
     
• The composition, alignment and properties of required views using the view tools in IdeateApps
   
• How Ideate Software solutions can reduce project setup tasks and increase overall efficiency of Revit projects

To see these demonstrations, view the recording of the webinar. 

About The Architect’s Newspaper
The Architect’s Newspaper delivers quality news and cultural reporting to architects, designers, engineers, landscape architects, lighting designers, interior designers, academics, developers, contractors and other parties interested in the built urban environment. 

About CEStrong
CEStrong is a continuing education partner of The Architect’s Newspaper. It is a Registered Provider with The American Institute of Architects Continuing Education System.
 

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.

Every day, our Ideate Software Support team fields all types of questions from AECO professionals all around the world. 

Did you know that if you are an Ideate Software customer, you can request a dataset containing instructions, sample datasets and solutions for a variety of challenging Revit workflows? We see these requests for datasets cross our Support desk all the time, so please don’t be shy in requesting the information from us.

Here are short descriptions of what we offer:

1. BOMA Dataset for Ideate BIMLink - BOMA is an acronym for the Building Owners and Managers Association. Please read this BOMA Calculations blog article by Sash Kazeminejad that explains our available dataset and the workflow process in detail.
   
   

2. Programming with Masses Dataset for Ideate BIMLink - Please review this informative blog article about how you can use Ideate BIMLink to assist with creating Revit Masses for programming requirements.
   
   
    

3. Sample Pivot Table Dataset for Ideate BIMLink - Please review this Ideate BIMLink Help topic on how to use pivot tables in Excel with Ideate BIMLink.  We even have a snazzy new video on the subject!
   
   
   
    
4. Plumbing Fixture Counts Dataset for Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Sticky - This online Help topic is a great place to start for reviewing Plumbing Fixture Counts or Occupancy Summaries. You can also read this blog article on the topic.
   
   

5. Pile Cap Renumbering Dataset - Check out this excellent blog article that details the specific challenge of numbering Pile Caps because they need to be numbered in a way that reflects their relative location as well as their relationship to the nested pile families. Using Ideate ReNumber is easy and efficient. 
   
   
    
6. Document Issue Record (DIR) Dataset - Last but not least, this is one of our MOST requested datasets. You can review the main blog post detailing how you can use Ideate Software applications to manage the sheet revision process, and you can also review this follow-up blog post for customizing the Document Issue Record. We also have information in our online Help for Managing Revit Sheet-based Revisions with Ideate BIMLink. Using both Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Sticky together allows perfect synergy.
   
   

Summary

1. BOMA Dataset
2. Massing Dataset
3. Pivot Table Sample Dataset
4. Plumbing Fixture Counts Dataset
5. Renumbering Pile Cap Dataset
6. Document Issue Records (Revision) Dataset

So please don’t beat your head against the wall trying to create your own solutions. Send an email to [email protected] and request one dataset or request them all!  We will be waiting to hear from you!

This post is one in our series covering questions frequently addressed by our Support team. View other posts in the series. 
 

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.