SAN FRANCISCO, California - 12/4/2012 - Ideate, Inc., a leading Autodesk® Authorized Developer and Autodesk solutions provider offering quality software, training, support and custom consulting services to the AEC industry, returned as an exhibitor to Autodesk University 2012, with increased emphasis on its recently enhanced Ideate-developed software solutions, Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Explorer for Revit.

At the AU annual conference and exhibition in Las Vegas, design professionals from around the world attend classes, keynotes, product demonstrations, exhibits and networking events.

Bob Palioca, President, Ideate, Inc. said of AU 2012, "The shared energy and the concentration of knowledge at AU make it a truly rewarding technology event. We get in-person feedback from professionals who use the software we develop. That is invaluable for our ongoing updates. Plus, we have an opportunity to introduce the new features and enhancements of our software solutions. At AU in all the ways we participate, we get to help people within our industry become more productive and connected, and help them keep learning."

Ideate BIMLink lets users access, analyze, control, edit, extract, and manage BIM data with speed, ease and accuracy within a reliable and stable platform. It lets users pull data from an Autodesk Revit file into user-friendly Microsoft Excel and push Excel data into Revit with equal ease.

Ideate Explorer for Revit is a simple, powerful Autodesk Revit add-on to explore, quantify and manage the 100,000+ building elements in a Revit model.

To coincide with AU 2012, Ideate, Inc. is offering worldwide an Autodesk University 2012 bundle until December 31, 2012. The combination is available via easy web download. It is limited to one offer per company. Included are single, stand-alone, full, upgradeable licenses of Ideate BIMLink 2013 and Ideate Explorer for Revit 2013 at US$599. The promotion offers a savings of more than 50 percent from US$1249. Network pricing is also available. For details, contact: [email protected]

About Ideate, Inc. Ideate, Inc. is a leading Autodesk Authorized Developer with 25+ years' experience in software development and specific focus on Building Information Modeling (BIM) and is an Autodesk solutions provider offering quality software, training, support and custom consulting services to the AEC industry since 1992. Headquartered in San Francisco, California and operating five Autodesk Authorized Training Centers (ATCs) in the northwestern U.S., Ideate is recognized as an Autodesk Gold Partner for Architecture, Engineering and Construction, one of Autodesk's highest levels of authorization.

Ideate BIMLink lets users pull data from an Autodesk Revit file into user-friendly Microsoft Excel and push Excel data into Revit with equal ease. ideatesoftware.com

Ideate Explorer for Revit is a simple, powerful Autodesk Revit add-on to explore, quantify and manage the 100,000+ building elements in a Revit model. ideatesoftware.com

Autodesk, 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. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

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SAN FRANCISCO, California - 11/27/2012 - Ideate, Inc., a leading Autodesk® Authorized Developer and Autodesk solutions provider offering quality software, training, support and custom consulting services to the AEC industry, introduces new Ideate BIMLink 2013 workflow enhancements at AU 2012, November 27-29, 2012, Las Vegas, Nevada. Ideate BIMLink is an Ideate-developed Autodesk® Revit® software add-on with a five star rating on the Autodesk Exchange Apps Store.

At AU, architects, engineers, construction professionals, building owners and project managers from firms of all sizes around the world who use Ideate BIMLink can see how their requested enhancements have been integrated into the software solution to further ensure the integrity, stability and quality of their building information modeling (BIM) data.

New Ideate BIMLink features include License Borrowing enabled (2013 only), Multi-Category Links, Smart Filtering that allows exclusion of items from Export, Read and write to existing Excel files, and Coordinate (XYZ) data.

"As developers, we are committed to making sure our customers get maximum productivity from their software solutions. To that end, we ask for feedback, we listen, and we continually refine and enhance. We update Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Explorer for Revit on an ongoing basis," says Ideate Inc. president Bob Palioca.

Ideate BIMLink lets users access, analyze, control, edit, extract, and manage BIM data with speed, ease and accuracy within a reliable and stable platform. With Ideate BIMLink, users can pull data from a Revit file into user-friendly Microsoft® Excel®, edit and push Excel data into Revit with equal ease. The data - the "I" in BIM - can then inform BIM decisions with precision. Wasteful data-entry tasks are eliminated. Tasks that once took days take only minutes. Get started with a trial version today.

To coincide with AU 2012, Ideate, Inc. is offering worldwide an Autodesk University 2012 bundle promotion until December 31, 2012. The combination is available via easy web download. It is limited to one offer per company. Included are single, stand-alone, full, upgradeable licenses of Ideate BIMLink 2013 and Ideate Explorer for Revit 2013 at US$599. Ideate Explorer for Revit finds hidden elements in Revit databases. The promotion offers a savings of more than 50 percent from US$1249. Offer expires Jan. 1, 2013. Network pricing is also available. (This offer has expired, see the latest packages and pricing here.) For more details, contact: [email protected]

About Ideate, Inc.

Ideate, Inc. is a leading Autodesk Authorized Developer with 25+ years' experience in software development and specific focus on Building Information Modeling (BIM) and is an Autodesk solutions provider offering quality software, training, support and custom consulting services to the AEC industry since 1992. Headquartered in San Francisco, California and operating five Autodesk Authorized Training Centers (ATCs) in the northwestern U.S., Ideate is recognized as an Autodesk Gold Partner for Architecture, Engineering and Construction, one of Autodesk's highest levels of authorization.

Ideate BIMLink lets users pull data from an Autodesk Revit file into user-friendly Microsoft Excel and push Excel data into Revit with equal ease. ideatesoftware.com

Ideate Explorer for Revit is a simple, powerful Autodesk Revit add-on to explore, quantify and manage the 100,000+ building elements in a Revit model. ideatesoftware.com

Autodesk, 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. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

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My favorite new feature in Revit 2013 is the ability to persistently control views through the use of View Templates. In earlier versions of Revit there was a "Default View Template" field which didn't do a whole lot. Sure, you could grab a whole bunch of views through the Project Browser and manually force them to update per your View Template rules, but who has time to remember?

Ideate BIMLink exposes this data and lets you extract information from the host object that the rebar is placed in, thus allowing you to create a schedule that contains both rebar information as well as information about the elements it is placed in. Creating such a schedule using Ideate BIMLink is easy:

1. Launch IdeateBIMLink from the Add-Ins tab

2. Create a New Link with Structural Rebar as the category

3. In the Properties dialog box, notice how you can add data about the objects that the rebar is hosted in.

You can export this data to Microsoft Excel, Edit it if need be and bring it back into the Revit Model.

This post was originally published on the Ideate Solutions Blog 11.12.2012

Have you worked on a project in Revit and gone through the trouble of selecting a number of elements to be modified, then realized that you needed some additional information, or needed to check on something else before you modified the elements? Did you then clear the selection, checked on the information or reference, then went back and re-selected the same elements previously so that NOW you could modify it?

New to Revit 2013, you have the ability to save any selection of elements that you have selected, and recall those selections at any point.

In order to Save Selection Sets you must first select the elements that will be within the selection. Standard selection methods apply, [Cntrl] + Pick, Drag the cursor for Window and Crossing selections, or use Ideate Explorer for Revit 2013.

Once the elements have been selected, in the Modify| Xxxx tab, under the Selection panel, you can select the Save tool to create a Saved Selection. Enter a name for the desired selection. Later this selection set can be recalled at any time by accessing the Manage tab, and under the Selection panel selecting the Load tool. This will display the Retrieve Filters dialog where your saved selections can be recalled, selecting the elements within the filter.

As the Load button is placed in the Manage tab, I have found it advantageous for it to be placed in my Quick Access toolbar for quick retrieval of my saved selections. This has been something needed for quite some time and I am very excited to take advantage of saved selection sets in my models.

About the Author

Ron Palma - AEC Solutions Application Specialist Ron has 23+ years of experience in the AEC industry as a designer, lead project designer, trainer and CAD manager. His instructional background includes Autodesk Certified Instructor, trainer, support technician, educator at Portland Community College and Clackamas Community College, and a U.S. Army certified instructor. Follow Ron @RonPalmaAEC. This post was originally published on the Ideate Solutions Blog.

1. While the view is active, turn on the crop boundary. Hover the cursor over the boundary to read the tooltip and status bar. This will tell you what the view name is.
2. In the Project Browser under the Sheets category, expand the [+] beside the Sheet name and a list of the views assigned to the sheet will be displayed.
3. My favorite option, especially if you have a number of views on a sheet such as a detail sheet is to use the Ideate Explorer for Revit. With this method, look at the Visible in Active View option. This will display a Viewports Result, expand the Viewports until you can see a list of views.

Now here is where using Ideate Explorer for Revit is cool. The other methods list out the views, so now you have the view names narrowed down, but you have to figure out which view you actually need. With the Ideate Explorer, you can select the view name, which will highlight the view on the sheet. With this method you get a visual of which view you are trying to find with the name listed in Ideate Explorer.

Locating views assigned to a sheet in Revit is just one of the ways that Ideate Explorer gives you command of the data in your Revit model. To find out more, download Ideate Explorer by visiting the Ideate Software download page.

About the Author

Ron Palma - AEC Solutions Application Specialist Ron has 23+ years of experience in the AEC industry as a designer, lead project designer, trainer and CAD manager. His instructional background includes Autodesk Certified Instructor, trainer, support technician, educator at Portland Community College and Clackamas Community College, and a U.S. Army certified instructor. Follow Ron @RonPalmaAEC. This post was originally published on the Ideate Solutions Blog.