San Francisco, CA, February 07, 2023 – Ideate Software, an Autodesk® AEC Industry Partner and Autodesk® Authorized Developer, presents its latest customer spotlight. This story is about Parkin Architects, a well-known architectural leader in Canada for acute and mental healthcare, recreation, science, technology and research, justice, corrections, and education. 

Parkin initially started using Ideate BIMLink to meet a specific need and has since expanded its use of Ideate Software tools to include Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, and IdeateApps.

“Delivering as promised is critical, and Ideate Software helps us do that,” said Oscar Ramos-Martinez, BIM Manager, Parkin. “Their products address challenges we face, and they are easy to learn and use.”

Here are some examples of how Parkin uses Ideate Software add-ins for Revit:

• Ideate BIMLink: Set up new models with functional project data, transfer parameter values to doors from hosts, manage FF&E ID information, and manage room data
• Ideate Explorer: Quality control activities. “With Ideate Explorer and its Query tool, we can find any element in the model, select it, locate it within the model, browse through its properties, identify issues, and more,” said Oscar. 
• Ideate Sticky: Live-link Microsoft Excel spreadsheets containing code requirements to Revit files
• IdeateApps: Apply room numbers to doors, create views, align views. “As we are preparing documents for submission, we simply run Ideate Align and the alignments are perfect,” said Oscar.   

Read Spotlight on Parkin Architects for more.

Visit www.ideatesoftware.com to learn how Ideate Software add-ins for Revit help users save time, increase model accuracy, improve deliverables, and elevate design. Give them a try by  downloading trial versions or purchasing the bundle for access to Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, IdeateApps, and Ideate StyleManager for six months.

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About Ideate Software - Ideate Software, an Autodesk® AEC Industry Partner and Autodesk® Authorized Developer, empowers Revit users to gain unprecedented control over their data. They developed Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, IdeateApps, and Ideate StyleManager to solve persistent problems in architecture, engineering, and construction, and owner-operator (AECO) workflows. They developed Ideate Automation to boost the power of their Revit plugins by running time-intensive activities in the background.

Autodesk and Autodesk Revit are trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. Microsoft Excel is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

Richard Taylor, Technical Evangelist, Ideate Software

Ideate Software’s Technical Evangelist Richard Taylor is a renowned expert in AECO industries and technology. Before joining Ideate Software 8 years ago, he worked for Intergraph, Bentley, and Autodesk, and he was part of the original development of Revit while at Revit Technology Corporation. You can see Richard on our webinars where he leads informative sessions on our Revit add-in solutions. He also stays connected with the AECO community by attending and presenting at many industry trade shows and conferences. You can read his predictions for 2023 in an article featured within a blog post by AECCafe Weekly, a leading portal that delivers the latest AEC industry commentary, news, product reviews, articles, event information, and resources from a single, convenient point.

“I was thrilled to be asked to share my point of view with readers of AECCafe,” said Richard. “We are living in such interesting times, and it is exciting to take a look at the trends of the past couple of years and discuss how they will shape the way we work going forward.”

Find Richard on Twitter and LinkedIn.
 

Autodesk Desktop Connector Version 16.0 Impacts Ideate Sticky

A recent change to the Autodesk Desktop Connector includes new file path locations for all local files. This change is described in the recent Desktop Connector Release Notes. While this is a deja-vu-all-over-again situation, we hope the information below will be useful in weathering this change. In a future blog post, we will discuss some of the positive impacts of the newer version, but for now, please review the information below to prepare for the risks.

 
AUTODESK CHANGE - New Workspace Location

• This release has temporarily removed the Change Workspace command
• The workspace has been moved to a new location under %userprofile%\DC\

Example of the change:

• Old path using Desktop Connector 15.8 or earlier: “C:\Users\[user name]\ACCDocs” 
• New path using Desktop Connector 16.0: “C:\Users\[user name]\DC\ACCDocs.” 

This change may impact Ideate Software customers. Please read below for per-product implications.

Ideate Sticky

For those of you using Ideate Sticky and storing your Excel, Word, or PDF files on BIM 360/ACC, you will find that this change will result in broken file paths for Ideate Sticky. We recommend the following steps, in order of importance:

1. Avoid updating to Desktop Connector 16.0 for now, if possible. We will re-code Ideate Sticky to support this change in the future and hope to release Ideate Sticky within 30 days of the Revit 2024 release.
2. If access to a shared network location is available, you can use the “Update From” function to batch re-path to the new location.
3. If you do not have access to a shared network location, then you can use the “Update From” function to batch re-path to the new Autodesk Docs location. This workaround will resolve the pathing for one user only.  

Ideate Automation

Ideate Automation will work fine with the file path change. However, if you have customized your Ideate Automation scripts and those scripts are writing file content to a BIM 360/ACC path, you will need to adjust your script to use the new file path. Using find and replace for “\ACCDocs” to “\DC\ACCDocs” for script should do the trick.

Additionally, you can use the %userprofile% syntax to reference not only the sub-path to these Autodesk Docs files, but also to other folder path locations, such as One Drive that support local user desktop file storage.

Help us Improve

We strive to integrate our solutions into the Autodesk eco-system wherever possible. In this case, our ability to handle this change is limited by the lack of a formal Application Programmer Interface (API) for the Autodesk Desktop Connector. You can let Autodesk know this is important by voting for this idea on the BIM 360 API forum.

In 2022, we once again achieved our goal of quickly aligning our Ideate Software solutions with the latest version of Revit (and 3 previous releases) while introducing new products and features that respond to requests from Revit users:

• Perform time-intensive tasks in the background with Ideate Automation 2.0
• Review 2D annotations and clashes with Ideate Annotate, a new tool within IdeateApps
• Find Revit elements by their respective tag values with Ideate Explorer
• Maintain model health more easily with Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Annotate, and Ideate Automation using our Revit Model Health Check
• Review Revit Parameter information with Ideate StyleManager and Ideate BIMLink
• Publish PDF information with ease using Ideate Automation

In-Person Gatherings Back in the Mix!

For much of our team, the most memorable thing about 2022 was the return of in-person gatherings. After two long years of online-only appointments, meetings, conferences, etc., restrictions lifted and we went to town, literally! 

• England - December Revit Data Management Insights Group – London
• Australia - BILT Australia – Gold Coast
• Germany - BIM World - Munich
• England - London Build Expo
• United States - Autodesk University
• Scotland - Women in BIM 
• Ireland - BIM Coordinators Summit – Dublin
• United States - BILT North America
• England - May Revit Data Management Insights Group - London
• France - BIM World – Paris
• England – Ideate Software Beta Group Lunch & Learn
• Canada – Toronto City Tour Seminar

Customers Remain Our Priority 

Ideate Software invests heavily in ensuring our customers are aware of all the ways our Revit add-ins simplify data management. Here are just a few examples:

Online Training & Presentations

Virtual trainings continue to be a favorite learning method for customers; they appreciate the live meetings to ask questions and the easy access to recordings, which they can refer to often and recommend to colleagues:

• 3 Key Ingredients of a Productive BIM Strategy
• Productivity Enhancing Updates to IdeateApps
• Getting Started with Ideate Automation
• Advanced Revit Model Health
• Wishlist Granted – Top User Requests and Implemented Features
• Online User Group Meeting on Parameters
• Q&A Session with Ideate Software
• Automate Sheet and View Management

Online Events

Online events such as seminars, podcasts, and webinars continued to be popular and a great way for Ideate Software to engage with the greater AECO industry.

• BIMxt November Meeting
• The Architect’s Newspaper webinar for July featuring Managing Revit Sheets and Views 
• The Architect’s Newspaper for March featuring Revit Data Management
• BIMThoughts Podcast featuring our ViewCreator Room View Method
• BIMThoughts Podcast on BIM in the UK

Ideate Software in the Press

•    Ideate Annotate and Other IdeateApps Updates for Revit 2023 by AECBytes

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Based on positive comments received in 2021, we continued our Training and Support blog post series, which provide detailed answers to frequent customer questions. 

Here are just a few from 2022. Visit Training Series and Support Series for more. 

Training Series	Support Series
Create Sheets from Views	Find Revit Elements Assigned to Design Options
Place Viewports on Sheets	Sort Revit Warnings by Level
Move Elements to Another Level	Find Overridden Dimensions

Online Demos of Top 10 Ways to Use Ideate Explorer to Audit Revit Models

To make it easier for customers to get right to the model auditing content they want, we split up the information from our popular webinar, Top 10 Auditing Tips, into 10 very short video demonstrations and posted them on our YouTube channel. Now customers can bookmark the page with all 10 videos and quickly view the ones they need when they need them.  

An Outstanding Customer Experience Delivered by an Oustanding Team

The leadership at Ideate Software knows that our success is based on our tremendous employees who take great pride in delivering value to customers, coworkers, the company, and the AECO industry overall.

To thank our employees for their hard work and commitment, the leadership team was pleased to host an employee retreat in Hawaii this year. Team members and family members reconnected after long absences or met in person for the first time and spent some quality time getting to know each other. This team-building event recognized the contributions of the team and energized everyone for continued opportunities to develop and support innovative software for Revit users around the world.

Thank you!

As we close out the year, we send sincere thanks to Ideate Software employees, customers, consultants, partners, and others who helped us achieve our 2022 goals. We look forward to 2023 being another year of collaboration, innovation, and success.

Stay current on all our activities in 2023 by following us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.
 

  

 

Revit users and BIM managers need to understand Revit project health. Often the project data metrics (warnings, in-place families, annotation, model groups, and views not on a sheet) are time consuming to collect and quantify. Unaddressed issues pile up over time and can take a long time to track and correct.

Ideate Software, with the use of Ideate Automation and Microsoft Power BI, created an automation script and Power BI template to address Revit model health issues.

For BIM managers looking to visualize curated details of their Revit model health, such as the project data metrics, and wanting to visualize these metrics in Microsoft Power BI, Ideate Software developed a Power BI template.

 
With this Power BI template, BIM users can understand the following Revit model issues:

• Project Information including total Revit warnings and warnings per file size
• Revit Warnings over Time
• Top 5 Warnings as defined and managed by Ideate Explorer
• Model Groups
• Views Not on Sheet
• Average Annotation Issues per Sheet as defined and managed by IdeateApps>Annotate
• CAD Imports (with Details)
• In-Place Families (with Details)

For more details, and step-by-step instructions visit the Help file.

Current Ideate Automation subscribers can request the Power BI template files by contacting [email protected].

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

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About the Author

David Haynes, Director, Ideate Software
David is a project management certified professional. Before joining Ideate, David had his own architectural practice and was president of a commercial design-build construction company for 15 years. A graduate of the University of Arizona, he has worked as an architect, contractor, and developer, and he was a national construction manager for a national retailer. David's current passion at Ideate Software revolves around how data influences AECO business decisions.