Ideate Sticky is a powerful tool that allows you to live-link Microsoft Excel files in Revit as Schedules. Any changes made to the Excel file can easily be updated in your Revit model, either automatically or with a simple click of the update button.

Since a Sticky renders itself in a Schedule header, limitations of features in a Revit Schedule header prevent us from splitting a long Sticky directly in Revit. The body of a Schedule, however, has this feature. Luckily for us, we can easily and effectively accomplish the splitting of a long Sticky directly in Excel. Once accomplished, you can simply link each of the split Stickies into your Revit model as separate Stickies.

Example of one Sticky split up into multiple Stickies using the OFFSET feature in Excel. This feature allows the user to simply input the number of rows of data they want in each split Sticky and Excel will elegantly split the data evenly.

To learn more about this process, watch this detailed video on splitting long Stickies.

For more information on Ideate Sticky, be sure to visit our support page.

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

About the Author

Sash Kazeminejad - AIA, LEED AP, BCI, BCC - Customer Success Manager
Sash earned his Master of Architecture from Montana State University and is a California registered architect, LEED Accredited Professional, and a Bluebeam Certified Instructor. 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.

Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Sticky are two powerful Ideate solutions that connect Autodesk Revit software and Microsoft Excel:

• Ideate BIMLink: Pull information from a Revit file into Excel for editing
• Ideate Sticky: Display non-BIM data from an Excel worksheet in a Revit project

Using Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Sticky Together 

 
Many workflows can be enhanced by extracting data from Revit with Ideate BIMLink, reformatting it in Excel, and then displaying that formatted data in Revit projects using Ideate Sticky. Here are two examples:

1. Document Issue Records – Revision data can be exported from the Revit project via Ideate BIMLink and reorganized in a matrix format in Excel. This matrix data can be linked into Revit via Ideate Sticky to be displayed on a Sheet. Watch the YouTube video, Ideate BIMLink - Document Issue and Revision Records.
2. Plumbing Fixture Counts or Occupancy Summaries – For plumbing calculations with conditional statements to be applied only to subtotaled data, raw data can be exported via Ideate BIMLink, subtotals can be calculated and formatted in alignment with code requirements in Excel, and the formatted data can be linked to Revit via Ideate Sticky.  

For more information on each of these workflows, visit the related Help page. 

For implementation services or to learn more about how Ideate BIMLink and 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.

Revit software enables some revision capabilities. Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Sticky take over where Revit leaves off.

• Do you need revisions that aren’t in Revision Clouds to appear in the Titleblock?
  If yes, in Revit you must update the “Revision on Sheet” option within each sheet view.
• Do you need a schedule of all revisions on each sheet?
  If yes, chances are that you have created a workaround, because Revit only lists the latest revision.

While the methods above can get the job done, they take a lot of time and they increase the chance of errors.

Watch our short video to see how you can use Ideate BIMLink to aggregate revision information in Microsoft Excel to edit the options in bulk and Ideate Sticky to bring the formatted Excel schedule back into Revit to place onto sheets.

 

You’ll see how the work that has taken you hours if not days can be reduced to just minutes by completing two simple steps.

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

About the Author

Sash Kazeminejad - AIA, LEED AP, BCI, BCC - Customer Success Manager
Sash earned his Master of Architecture from Montana State University and is a California registered architect, LEED Accredited Professional, and a Bluebeam Certified Instructor. 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.

San Francisco, CA, June 8, 2018 – Ideate Software, a veteran Autodesk Developer Network member, announced today the launch of its applications for Autodesk Revit 2019.

“Throughout the year, we listened as our customers explained their design, BIM, and workflow challenges,” said Glynnis Patterson, director of software development. “In direct response, our software developers created enhancements to our popular and effective tools for Revit.”

The updates are also for Autodesk Revit versions 2016, 2017, and 2018, and they streamline Revit BIM data management:

• Ideate BIMLink enables precise Revit data control.  This Ideate BIMLink video highlights the updates, which include:
  • Access to more data for items such as conduit runs, cross-section rotation, reference planes, and primary design options
  • Data about who created and updated elements and types
  • Streamlined installation and activation
• Ideate Explorer enables fast Revit data discovery. This Ideate Explorer video highlights the updates, which include:
  • Revit warnings review interface tab
  • Access to more Revit data and information about who created what elements
  • Streamlined installation and activation
• IdeateApps offers efficient Revit data production. This IdeateApps video highlights the updates, which include:
  • The ability to renumber elements from within a schedule view
  • The ability to renumber conduit runs
  • The ability to use ViewCreator to duplicate sections and elevations
  • QuickSelect support for <direct shapes> and <ifc> elements,
  • Streamlined installation and activation
• Ideate Sticky provides accurate data display. This Ideate Sticky video highlights the updates, which include:
  • Streamlined installation and activation

“Our customers know the value of saving time and improving their design deliverables. I am both proud of the accomplishments of the Ideate Software team and our customers who continue to push us to develop better products to solve their design and business challenges,” stated Bob Palioca, president.

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, and 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.

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.

###

 It is probably safe to say Revit models contain a wealth of information. Some of this information can be generated on your own terms, and some of it is automatically generated by Revit itself, but a lot of it is unavailable to the end user, unless they have software that can tap into the Revit API.

One of the issues with having all of this information is having to decide what will be available for viewing, and how it should be composed or used within a Revit project.

For those of you who have had experience with Revisions in Revit, you probably have discovered there are a lot of benefits, and limitations to the revision tools. For example, you have the ability to customize the numbering schemes to match your office standards or client requirements. Clouding and tagging views and sheets is generally easy, unless you are clouding Parent Views with dependent views that have been placed on sheets. Revisions can get a little tricky in these situations!

But one of the biggest limitations to revisions in Revit is the scheduling aspect. As of now, Revit only has the ability to schedule revisions based on Current Revision information, such as Current Revision, and/or Current Revision Date. While this information may be sufficient for some folks, many owners and contractors require a schedule listing all sheets, including each revision, on each sheet. Unfortunately, this type of schedule is simply not native to Revit.

We have had many inquiries from customers looking to try and resolve this issue with Ideate BIMLink. As a result, we created a nice Excel Macro Template that works with our pre-defined links in Ideate BIMLink. As an added bonus, you can insert the Excel files back into Revit as a Sticky schedule, if you so choose. If you make any changes to your revisions, all you have to do is re-export the information back into your Excel Macro template to regenerate the information. Sticky will then recognize the updates, and auto-update, as long as this feature is enabled in your Revit model.

For more information on how to use the template and learn some of the basics of Revisions in Revit, be sure to check out our video on how to use the Document Issues Records Template . If you are an existing Ideate BIMLink customer and would like a copy of the Excel Macro Template, be sure to contact Ideate Software.

Thank you for reading! For more information on Revit and other Autodesk products, and information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, please visit our Ideate Software website.

About the Author

Sash Kazeminejad - ACI, LEED AP AEC Senior Application Specialist
Sash is a registered Architect and LEED Accredited Professional who holds a Master of Architecture from Montana State University. Sash’s experience includes project management, BIM management, and design for architectural firms in California, Montana, and Oregon. As an Autodesk Certified Instructor, Sash provides Revit Architecture training and solutions for AECO firms. Find Sash on Twitter.