You may know that you can create new Revit elements with Ideate BIMLink. Did you know that following a similar process, you can also create new Revit revision sequences? 

1. Review Revision Sequences in Parent File
    
   • Open a project with Revit. If the project has linked files, select the one that represents the primary source of revision data
   • Select the Revision button from the Sheet Composition panel on the View tab
   • You’ll see that any issued sequence will not be editable. Before opening Ideate BIMLink, uncheck the Issued box for the sequences you want to edit. Note: The editable fields for Revisions not issued are Date, Description, Issued, Issued to, and Issued by.
     
     
      
2. Edit Revision Data in the Parent File with Ideate BIMLink
    
   • ​​​​​​​Launch Ideate BIMLink
   • Hit Load Revit Sample
   • Select “Revisions” from the list of samples
   • Review the properties and hit OK
   • Select Export Revit Elements to Excel then open the Excel file
   • You can now edit any data within a cell that is white. Due to the nature of the Issued property, we recommend that you don’t edit it if you are editing other properties from the same sequence
   • Save the changes to the Excel file and select Import Excel Values into Revit to complete the changes
   • If you made a change to Issued, use Ideate BIMLink again to edit only this property or manually reset the property using the Revision button in Revit
      
3. Copy Revision Data to a Linked File
   
   With Revit Revision data set up to standards, you can use the same data to create matching data in another file. The instructions below assume that the revision sequences have not been set up.
    
   • Open the Revit project file that you would like to mirror in the Revision sequences defined within the original parent file.
   • Launch Ideate BIMLink
   • Hit Load Sample
   • Select Revisions
   • Review the properties and hit OK
   • Select Export to save the results to a new Excel file and open that new file
   • Copy the Excel data from the original file to the new file. See image below. Don’t copy data from Column A, B, or C
   • Write the word “NEW” in Column A for each new Revision sequence to be created in the Revit project file. The values for Column B and C will be automatically setup by Revit when imported
   • Hit Save in Excel and then Import in Ideate BIMLink to complete the changes
     
     

Browse our website to learn more ways you can use our Revit addins to streamline processes, improve model health, and elevate design. 
 

The purpose of Ideate Software plugins for Revit is to add functionality to Autodesk Revit software that streamlines workflows, increases the accuracy of model data, and improves the performance of the Revit models. While doing all of this, our Revit plugins will also save you time! You’ll save time on setting up models, building models, updating model data, auditing models for accuracy, and preparing model documents. By reducing the time spent on these tasks, you and your team will have more time to spend on interesting and valuable design activities.

To determine just how much time our customers save using two of our top Revit plugins, Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Explorer, we surveyed customers in the architecture, engineering, construction, and owner-operator space from around the world about the time-savings fostered by these two products. 

We gathered all the responses, and to make it easy to review the large amount of data, we created documents for each discipline.

As an example, here are the results in the Ideate BIMLink - Common Workflows for Any Discipline category: Ideate BIMLink Survey Results — General

For time savings relevant to specific disciplines, view these documents:

• Common Workflows for Architects and Interior Designers
• Common Workflows for Structural Engineers
• Common Workflows for MEP Engineers
• Common Workflows for Construction and Design/Build Professionals

Calculate the Time Savings Possible at Your Company with Ideate BIMLink

We’ve made it easy to see how much time you can save by using Ideate BIMLink. Simply open this Ideate BIMLink ROI Calculator and fill in the required fields. We are certain you will be pleased. 

Explore the Time Savings of Ideate Explorer for Revit

Based on our survey results, Ideate Explorer customers report an average time savings of 30 minutes per week. Check out this document for information on the frequency they perform specific tasks, then check out our Ideate Explorer ROI Calculator to convert time savings into dollar savings.

Stay Connected

Learn more about our top Revit addons.

Check us out on X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

If you have any questions, reach out to us. We are here to help you understand and use our Revit plugin solutions. 

 

We were pleased to welcome Nigel Davies from Evolve Consultancy to a webinar to share how Ideate Software products have revolutionized the way he and his team complete tasks by reducing weeks of work to hours. 

Watch the recording of this 30-minute webinar to see how Evolve Consultancy uses Ideate BIMLink to streamline workflows on a high-demand, new-build project called the Center for Arabic Calligraphy, where the client requires extensive, detailed, weekly reports on 19 KPIs. You’ll also learn how they use:

• Ideate BIMLink to complete required reports on COBie 
• Ideate Automation to perform a standard weekly reporting process overnight that used to take almost a full day 

 

About Evolve Consultancy

Founded in 2005, Evolve is an internationally renowned BIM consultancy providing services and support around the design, development, and implementation of technology-enabled data production processes to contractors, architects, and engineers in the UK, the US, Europe, Middle East, and Australia.

When learning how to use Autodesk Revit software, people get trained on the basics of how to use sample files, open and save Revit models, as well as several workflows, including how to create projects, walls, floors, roofs; and how to place doors, windows, and curtains. They also learn how to add dimensions and notes and to create sheets.

While appreciating the power of BIM tools, Revit users see how the software allows them to create accurate and precise designs, easily make changes, and see how the changes affect the building model. In addition, users also begin to discover some inefficiencies. Tasks, some that must be done hundreds of times during a project, need to be done manually. Plus, there are several complexities within the software that make model management time consuming and difficult, including the fact that some elements are not visible in certain views and that deletion sets can contain elements unknown to the user, who are then surprised and annoyed when they discover the elements are gone. 

Instead of investing in tackling the inefficiencies themselves, Autodesk turns to trusted partners to develop Revit plugins. They created the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) for software developers who want to develop tools that extend Autodesk products and technologies. ADN members are full-time professional software developers working with Autodesk technologies that can access Autodesk desktop software and get one-on-one direct support for software development based on virtually all Autodesk desktop technologies. They can also access confidential Autodesk information on technology futures, beta software, and basic marketing benefits. 

Ideate Software – An Autodesk Authorized Developer and Member of the Autodesk Developer Network

Since launching our first Autodesk Revit Plugin, Ideate Explorer, at Autodesk University in 2008, Ideate Software has been committed to helping Revit users unlock advanced functionality and efficiency in their BIM designs. Today, our suite of products includes five Revit plugins, and one of them—IdeateApps —is comprised of 10 different tools. We developed each of our BIM tools to address specific, persistent problems in architecture, engineering, construction, and owner-operator workflows by giving Revit users unprecedented access to and control over the data in their models. In addition to our five Revit plugins, we developed Ideate Automation to run time-intensive BIM tasks in the background, freeing staff to do more meaningful work. 

Ideate Explorer - Considered by many firms worldwide the indispensable tool to investigate, clean-up, and manage the Revit building model, Ideate Explorer users 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.

It comes with four tools that increase its power: 

• Warnings Manager - Review and manage Revit warnings
• Navigate - Navigate through view-based elements within Revit—legends, schedules, sheets, and views—and quickly customize the browsing experience
• Query - Search on parameters, such as elements assigned a certain size or modeled as in-place families, sheets based on Issuance numbers, and dimensions that have been overridden
• Filters - Filter Revit model elements based on your specified parametric conditions

Ideate BIMLink – The powerful filtering and sorting options in Ideate BIMLink are used to manage and extract Revit data. Used to easily edit and update vast amounts of Revit data using Microsoft Excel, users can use the hundreds of library links included with Ideate BIMLink to immediately access the Revit data required. In addition to robust editing, users can create many Revit elements as well as manage workflows that just aren’t easy or even possible within standard Revit. For example, with Ideate BIMLink, users can: 

• Swap Revit elements
• Manage Revit Parameters
• Rename Revit elements
• Manage Revit Sheet Revision Workflows and Sheet/View Sets

Ideate Sticky – Originally developed to address customer comments, Ideate Sticky first allowed users to create and format tabular text in an Excel spreadsheet and then “stick” that spreadsheet on a Revit sheet as a Revit schedule. As we do with all products, we made meaningful updates to Ideate Sticky every year. Today, Ideate Sticky is used to:

• Link Microsoft Excel, Word, and PDF documents into Revit projects
• Link multi-paged documents at once
• Link Excel spreadsheets to Revit files as images or native Revit schedule data

Ideate StyleManager – Launched in 2019 to address challenges with Revit styles that arise when users import content, Ideate StyleManager simplifies the style management process which in Revit can be time consuming and risky. This powerful Revit plugin is used to:

• Safely delete styles that can’t be easily deleted or purged in Revit software
• Merge non-standard styles into standard styles
• Analyze style usage to understand the scope of a deletion
• Clean up Object Styles, Line Styles, Line Patterns, Fill Patterns, Materials, Material Appearance Assets, View Filters, Templates, and Scope Boxes
• Understand which views use View Filters

IdeateApps – This collection of tools launched in the summer of 2016 with:

• Ideate ReNumber to quickly update element numbers and names
• Ideate XRay to determine the cause of element visibility issues and fix the problems
• Ideate SmartDelete to understand and edit elements that will be deleted along with a selected element 
• Ideate QuickSelect to view all instances of difficult-to-find items

Within one year, we added four more tools:

• Ideate SpellCheck to check open sheets and views, sheets in a sheet list and all schedules
• Ideate SheetManager to filter sheet and view lists, create sheets, and place views onto sheets
• Ideate Clone to duplicate Sheets and manage viewports on those Sheets as well as to match title block family and parameters, sheet parameters and browser file location
• Ideate Align to align plan views in a set so they synchronize perfectly across all sheets

In 2018, we added:

• Ideate ViewCreator to batch-create multiple Revit views while complying with company BIM standards

And in 2022, we added:

• Ideate Annotate to ensure the legibility of tags, text, dimensions, and other annotative elements

Ideate Automation – Launched in 2020, this scripting solution runs time-intensive BIM tasks in the background while your staff does more meaningful work. Use Ideate Automation to:

• Open large Autodesk Revit files for data extraction
• Export key Revit model health data
• Create document issue records
• Prepare COBie data drops
• Generate quantity take-off data
• Generate regular, automated PDF exports
• Deliver CSV reports on key Revit family and project metrics
• Batch-export Revit sheets and/or views to DWG file format

Stay Connected

Learn more about our top Revit addons.

Check us out on X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

If you have any questions, reach out to us. We are here to help you understand and use our Revit plugin solutions. 
 

 

We add new features, and you just ask for more. (Thanks!)

In July of 2013 we created an easy way for Ideate BIMLink users to assign sheets to their respective revisions or issuances in: Ideate BIMLink for Revit 2014 Conquers Revisions!

The response was swift, "Thanks for saving me hours of time, but NOW I need help with this other Revit revision nonsense. I'm required to manage a complete list of all revisions for all sheets as a record, with the list of sheets as the rows, the list of revision dates as the columns, and, this is the kicker, the per sheet number of the revision within each corresponding cell, as shown."

Typical Document Issue Record with Revit Sheet and Revision Data.

We like it when you ask us to solve soul-sucking problems such as this. So here's your solution:

Ideate BIMLink and Document Issue and Revision Records

Existing Ideate BIMLink customers should contact [email protected] to request a copy of the Excel macro template used in this video.

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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 eclcofnj.org and growitgreenmorristown.org @GVPinNJ