BIM Support Specialist Laura Kay Smith, Kasian Architecture, Interior Design and Planning, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, inspired the creation of a new workflow using Ideate BIMLink--the development of Room Data Sheets for facilities planning. Now the Vancouver Kasian office is spearheading the use of Ideate BIMLink and the Data Sheet as a matter of firm-wide policy for every Integrated Project working with Strategic Facilities Planning.

Kasian invested about $1,800 on software solutions. The firm values associated training and deployment costs in hours at $3,200. Grand total expenditure to enhance collaboration, facilitate coordination, drastically minimize error and enable better decision making earlier with Ideate BIMLink: $5,000.

Ideate BIMLink routinely helps Kasian Architects and Functional Programmers figure out project space requirements. And, Ideate BIMLink feeds the Data Sheets for Kasian projects.

According to Smith, "In the past, we did all the Room data and qualifications by hand, which cost us expensive time. With our new standard that brings in Ideate BIMLink at the beginning of Integrated Projects, we save immeasurable time and money. Of the functionality at the beginning, designers are apt to have less re-design."

As Brigid Barriscale, Kasian Strategic Facilities Planning Manager explains, "When the Strategic Facilities Planning Department used to check data sheets by hand, it took two to three weeks. With Ideate BIMLink, it takes more like two to three hours."

Smith compares the former method that required two weeks of SFP analysts' time versus using only two hours for every project. If the firm averages only 10 projects per year, that uses only 20 hours instead of 20 weeks. And as Smith adds, "There is a lot less chance for error. We are checking with Excel, not by hand."

For the whole story: Kasian Sets a New Facilities Planning Standard Using Ideate BIMLink.

More Ideate BIMLink Case Studies.

BIM Support Specialist Laura Kay Smith, Kasian Architecture, Interior Design and Planning, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, knew about Ideate BIMLink and had an idea.

As she explains it, "Not everybody knows how to use Autodesk Revit, but everybody knows how to use Microsoft Excel." With support from the firm, Smith contracted with a consultant to write an Excel segue which would enable Kasian, with the help of Ideate BIMLink, to develop Room Data Sheets.

Each Room Data Sheet would have all the MEP and architectural finishes detailed. Everything that was supposed to be in a Room was in the Room. Only those who really needed Revit and Ideate BIMLink would employ those solutions. Everyone else could use Excel. The time saved by not manually inputting data is almost immeasurable.

According to Smith, "Using Revit Architecture with Ideate BIMLink to emulate the facilities planning of a project allows us to set the functional areas required, and visually establishes the functional and spatial parameters of the project. This provides the designers the basis for the development of the design. The continual link between the Excel Data Sheet with the functional/Room information required, allows a continual check of compliance on the project."

Clients have caught on quickly to the advantages. Smith explains, "The client can look at the Room Data Sheets, too. They can take out elements they don't want in the Rooms."

Kasian has now implemented using Ideate BIMLink for every Integrated Project working with Strategic Facilities Planning. For the whole story: Kasian Sets a New Facilities Planning Standard Using Ideate BIMLink

San Francisco, CA, 05/21/2014- Ideate, Inc., a leading Autodesk Authorized Developer and Autodesk solutions provider offering quality software, training, support and custom consulting services to the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry with a special focus on Building Information Modeling (BIM), today announced the publication of the latest Ideate Software customer success profile, "Ideate Software Presents Spotlight on Sparling: How Sparling is Solving Large Project Challenges with Ideate BIMLink."

Sparling, a specialty consulting firm with offices in Washington, Oregon, and California, offers electrical engineering, technology design consulting, audio/visual consulting, and acoustical and lighting design services. The firm provides design excellence and market leadership to fuel smart decisions in a wide variety of markets, from healthcare to biotech, education to entertainment. With a 67-year legacy of leadership, the firm's 130 seasoned professionals work collaboratively to deliver design excellence in their own backyard and on a national stage.

The firm is maximizing its BIM advantage with Ideate BIMLink - an Autodesk Revit tool that improves information flow, facilitates collaboration and makes managing BIM data faster and easier. R. Robert Bell, Design Technology Manager, Sparling, Lynnwood, Washington says of Ideate Software, "We are using Ideate BIMLink with great success to simplify several tedious tasks. Ideate BIMLink lets us provide a far higher level of service than we would be able to achieve without it."

Large project challenges highlighted in the success profile include ways Sparling has been eliminating warnings in 10 minutes with Ideate BIMLink vs. "forever" without it. Also, see how the Sparling team is making asset tagging easy in a large datacenter project, and how they have been able to accommodate sudden and unexpected changes in mid-stream quickly, even for projects of enormous size and complexity.

Bob Palioca, President, Ideate Inc., says, "We are delighted to see how our Ideate Software customer Sparling is creatively using our robust, resilient Revit data management tool, Ideate BIMLink. We celebrate their success as they gain a competitive edge and fulfill the sophisticated needs of clients on the cutting edge of BIM design technology."

Ideate has published "Ideate Software Presents: Spotlight on Sparling" online. Read the Customer Spotlight Success Study Read the Customer Spotlight Success Study.

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).  As an Autodesk solutions provider, Ideate has offered quality software, training, support and custom consulting services to the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industries since 1992. Headquartered in San Francisco, California and operating Autodesk Authorized Training Centers (ATCs) in California, Oregon and Washington, Ideate is recognized as an Autodesk Gold Partner for Architecture, Engineering and Construction, one of Autodesk's highest levels of authorization. Ideate Software is a comprehensive set of far-reaching BIM data management tools.

Ideate BIMLink powers the "I" in BIM, allowing users to pull data from an Autodesk Revit file into Microsoft Excel for fast and precise editing, and push the data back into Revit with equal ease.

Ideate Explorer for Revit lets users search, filter, quantify and select to easily manage the 100,000+ elements in a Revit model. Both solutions help Autodesk Revit users solve problems in AEC workflows and help the Revit community leverage BIM to its fullest advantage.

Autodesk, Revit and ATC 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.

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When the BVN/Jasmax team reviewed the design of an inventive sunshade for a large New Zealand office building, the team response to Melanie Tristram, Jasmax Associate - Revit Manager was, "We have no idea how we are going to construct this in Revit. It is going to take so, so long."

Angular blades would make up the diamond-shaped panels. Blades of varying length and color were both perforated and non-perforated. Additionally, a rotation factor would be included as well. With dozens of individual possibilities for permutation with each single blade, the goal was to have "no double-ups." The tally of possible permutations devoid of any repetition: about 3.5 million.

BVN with Jasmax had already engaged in a much smaller scale project with some similar properties. In the firm's quest for a solution, they had made online queries with Ideate Software and, seeing the possibilities contained within Ideate BIMLink, they had downloaded the trial version.

After experiencing success with the limited Ideate BIMLink trial and further consultation with Ideate Director of Software Development, Glynnis Patterson, Jasmax became one of the early adopters of stand-alone Ideate BIMLink.

End result - It took minutes instead of days.

Tristram says of the use case, "The time savings represents more than the hours we did not have to spend. No one, certainly not our Revit users, wants their valuable time caught up in days of data entry. That process is unsatisfying and it is open to error. Ideate BIMLink improved our efficiency and accuracy." Ideate BIMLink allowed the team to harness the data on each individual blade and visualize how it would or could interact with every other one. On each and every occasion that they wanted to explore a potential set of interactions, without BIMLink, they would have spent a day and a half of tedium. With BIMLink, they achieved each exploration in about half an hour.

For the whole story: BVN with Jasmax Makes 3.5 Million Combinations Workable in Minutes with Ideate BIMLink for Revit

For a detailed workflow on a unique, randomized façade see this recent blog post on computational design with Ideate BIMLink. 

Plamen Hristov, the Director of Design Technology at Capital Engineering Consultants, has aggressively pursued mastering the Revit MEP data model. Below is a transcript from a recent chat between Plamen and Director of Ideate Software, Glynnis Patterson on the topic of a solution for editing specified power and lighting loads in Revit using Ideate BIMLink.

GP: Plamen, you called Ideate Software technical support recently asking if it would be possible to edit the Specified Power and Specified Lighting properties via Ideate BIMLink. Can you give us some background on why these fields are important to your work?

PH: At Capital Engineering we are always looking for ways to automate tedious tasks and processes as well as push the boundaries of Building Information Modeling. In this case we wanted to extract as much data as possible from a large healthcare facility Revit model and use it as a starting point for our load calculations in Trane Trace. The project has over 1000 spaces and usually doing the takeoffs and recreating such model in Trane Trace can take several days. Once the data is extracted and processed in Trane Trace and Excel, we wanted to populate the Revit model with it.

GP: Is this kind of task unique to that project type?

PH: No, it is not. Load calculations are an essential part of designing the mechanical systems and they are performed for every project.

Editing Space with Ideate BIMLink

GP: Initially these values were displaying as read-only properties in Ideate BIMLink but as you pointed out to us, it's easy to globally select the spaces and allow these values to be specified. Once that step is taken Ideate BIMLink can easily edit these properties as shown in the image above. Thanks for taking the time to share your expertise with us Plamen!

About the Author

Glynnis Patterson, NCARB - Director of Software Development Glynnis is a Registered Architect and has worked with 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 across the nation, developing, and implementing best practices solutions. In her spare time Glynnis does volunteer work and builds Lego projects. @GVPinNJ