Recently I had the honor of welcoming Laura Kay Smith to our first-in-a-series of customer-led webinars. Laura is the BIM Manager Lead, Complex Building Department at SNC Lavalin, one of the largest engineering firms in the world. She has more than 20 years of experience as an industry leader in the integration and implementation of BIM, and she is passionate about sharing her experiences to help others move forward and make BIM more prevalent in their firms. She is a frequent speaker at industry events such as Autodesk University and BIM User Groups across the U.S. and Canada, and she runs the BIMFreak blog and website.

At this webinar, Laura spoke about how to use Ideate Software applications to become a BIM manager superstar. She talked about the applications she uses, why she decided to use them, and where they fit into her workflow. She also provided examples of how she uses them.

 
The presentation was well-received; here are some quotes from attendees:

• “Laura's explanation of how to create a standard process made a lot of sense. That, with how she used Ideate tools to get productivity out of the workflow, helped me better understand what I can do to improve my own BIM process.”
• “I liked seeing how she combines both BIMLink and Sticky to get accurate information in the correct format.”
• “I found value in her problem-solving skills. She has given me ideas to further leverage Ideate Software.”
• “Managing large amount of data in big and complicated projects is always challenging and sometimes even tedious. It is encouraging to know from experienced BIM users that there is a way to do it properly.”

To hear more from Laura, visit her website, BIMFreak. Browse our website for more information on our applications. Give them a try with a free trial version, or subscribe today. 

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 18 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.

San Francisco, CA, January 7, 2019 – Ideate Software, a veteran Autodesk Developer Network member, announced enhancements to its Revit software add-ons.

“While making all of our products compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we took the opportunity to implement some improvements and fixes,” said Glynnis Patterson, director of software development. “These November 2018 updates demonstrate our commitment to anticipating and quickly responding to customer needs and industry trends.”

Below are highlights of the updates. Click the links for more details: 

Ideate BIMLink 

• Ability to edit data in the program; no longer need to export it to Excel first
• Ability to export metric units with the expected Excel formatting for German customers
• Ability to edit the revision sequence of a revision cloud

Ideate Explorer

• Option to pre-define the importance of all 915 Revit warning types
• Ability to search for specific warnings and edit multiple warnings at once
• Option to gather warnings data only when the Warnings tab is active
• Ability to see when a project has exceeded a specified number of warnings

IdeateApps

• Ideate ReNumber now supports multi-category rules
• Ideate ViewCreator better handles visibility and graphic override conditions when duplicating plans by level

Ideate Sticky

• Ability to move or rename project folders in Windows Explorer and maintain Ideate Sticky pathing
• Ability to access Excel files that are part of an Autodesk BIM360 project
• Some previously incompatible Excel files are now compatible

“I appreciate the time our customers spend discussing Revit workflow challenges with us,” said Bob Palioca, president, Ideate Software. “By staying in touch with the architecture, engineering, construction, and building owner community, we know about their needs. And by hiring and retaining top software developers who understand the market, we’re able to enhance our products to address those needs.”

About Ideate Software

Ideate Software empowers Revit users to gain unprecedented control over their data. Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, and IdeateApps were all developed to solve persistent problems in architecture, engineering, construction, and owner (AECO) workflows. Ideate Software solutions enable Revit users to save time, increase accuracy, improve project deliverables, and elevate design.

Autodesk, the Autodesk logo, ATC, and Revit are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries.

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We were pleased with the number of attendees at our inaugural webinar on using Ideate Software tools to clean/organize templates, review the entire project for anomalies, and:

1. Delete unnecessary views and placed content
2. Merge non-standard content
3. Check the titleblock family

In addition, we provided tips and instructions on how to purge each type of object (e.g., Custom Family Types, CAD Import Types, and Object Styles). 

We developed this class name as “Purge your Template, Free your Model” but realized from survey feedback that a better name is “Tuning your Revit Template with Ideate Software.” Going forward, we will continue to develop and refine the class along the need to tune and manage the Revit template for optimum performance. Thanks for all the great feedback! 

If you missed the class, would like to see it again, or know someone else that would benefit from the lesson, here’s a link to the recording. 

 
Throughout the session, my colleague Richard Taylor and I answered questions. Here are some that I think may interest others:

Q. In Ideate ViewCreator, where does a view get defined when using specific sized views and scope boxes?
A. When you select the view to use as a base, it becomes the foundation for newly created views. You can start to make View Property changes to the new view. 

Q. Can you talk more about warnings definitions list you recommended that we add to the template?
A. Our Warnings Manager comes with a definition list of all 915 possible warnings. You can define a warning outside of your project or inside your template. You can establish a corporate standard on how each warning is ranked, so you can give your end users feedback into the severity of the warning. 

Q. Regarding the threshold of warnings in Warnings Manager, is it a user setting or a file setting?
A. It’s either saved in the actual file in the template, or if it’s not saved in template or the project itself, it’s based on the user setting on where to pull the information from. 

Q. I have a template that has another company’s name all over it. Can I search on the company name throughout the entire template?
A. Using Ideate BIMLink, you can filter the family and type names and export the list to Excel, search for the other company name, and replace it with a blank field. Then you can import the data back into Revit.

Visit 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

Glynnis Patterson, NCARB – Director of Software Development
Glynnis is a registered architect and has worked within the building information modeling (BIM) industry since 1998. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, she has worked as an architect, educator and construction site manager. Glynnis is the Director of Software Development Services and continues to work with AECO clients worldwide, developing, and consulting on solutions to BIM challenges. In her spare time, Glynnis volunteers for the local high school and with growitgreenmorristown.org. Find Glynnis on LinkedIn.

Thank you to everyone who attended one of the webinars in our recent series called, “Elevate your Revit Projects with Ideate Software.” We appreciate your time and enjoy hearing how you use our products and answering your questions. 

We hold these webinars in three time zones each quarter for customers and prospective customers. We demonstrate each of our applications for Revit software that enable users to eliminate laborious data editing, viewing, and management tasks:

Streamline project management by extracting information from a Revit model, sending it to Excel for review or manipulation, and importing it back into the Revit model

Enhance model accuracy by auditing your Revit project and understanding all the relationships. During the webinars, we delved into the new Warnings Manager, which enables users to review and manage warnings within a Revit project

Enhance cross-team workflows by linking Excel data into Revit projects as schedules
 

Simplify daily Revit tasks with this collection of nine tools

If you weren’t able to attend one of the webinars, or if you attended and would like to reinforce your learning by listening again, here’s a link to the November 1 session. The information presented is the same that was presented in the other two sessions. For detailed information on specific workflows, view our short how-to videos. 

For more information on how Ideate Software tools can enhance your business, please contact us at [email protected].

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 18 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.

Do you use screenshots to manage non-BIM data in your Revit files? If so, you know that they don’t always look professional and updating the information is time consuming. 

Streamline the process and enhance the look of your documents with Ideate Sticky, which elegantly connects non-BIM data, including images, from an Excel file into Revit projects. The possibilities for schedules that use image are almost endless.

Scaling Images to Fit

Ideate Sticky supports the importing of Revit images that have been placed within the Excel file. Each image will be scaled to fit within the Excel cell that aligns with the upper-left corner of the image. For best results, ensure your image doesn’t overlap adjacent cells. You can use the “merge cells” function to enlarge the area if necessary, to accommodate the image.

In the image below:

• The first example shows how the Sticky looks when the image spans more than one cell.
• The second example shows how the Sticky looks when the cells (A1:A2) have been merged. This example shows a better fit. 

Ideate Sticky customers can see how images can best be incorporated into the Excel file by using the Sample File ISB-Philips_Lighting_Spec.xlsx. This multi-sheet example showcases the inclusion of images within a Sticky. 

For more tips on how Ideate Sticky can streamline your workflows, view these short videos. 

For implementation services or to learn more about how Ideate Sticky can help your business, please contact [email protected].

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 18 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.