Failure to manage the health of your Revit project could result in poor performance, slow synchronization times, and model crashes, which can lead to delays, file corruption, and missed deadlines.

Keeping your Revit model healthy is essential to any successful project. A healthy model will prevent crashes from happening, ensure all the correct data is contained within the model, and be efficient and productive to work on.

Using Ideate BIMLink, you can set up a comprehensive Revit model health check and publish to a single Excel file with relevant information about the health of the selected Revit model.

How can I use Ideate BIMLink to perform a health check?

Ideate BIMLink is delivered with many health check link definitions that can be exported from the Revit model. Each link can be exported to the same Excel file to build a comprehensive health check.

Health check link definitions that ship with Ideate BIMLink.

Each link definition has a description to show exactly what the link contains.

The link definitions can be exported one by one to the same Excel file.

The resulting Excel file has a separate tab for each exported Ideate BIMLink health check link definition.

Once the Excel has been created, it can be formatted using Pivot tables and macros to display the information more efficiently. Or the data can be pushed into Power BI to create a more visual interpretation.

For more details see the Help file.

Ideate Automation

If you need to create health check reports on a regular basis, the process can be automated by using Ideate Automation. For more information see our Ideate Automation webpage and our Help file, How to Create a Health Check Report with Ideate Automation.

For additional training tips, check out our Training blog series

Browse our website to learn more about how Ideate Software add-on products help Revit users save time, increase model accuracy, improve deliverables and elevate design. You can give them a try by downloading trial versions or purchasing the bundle for access to the Revit plugin solutions Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, Ideate StyleManager, and IdeateApps for six months. 

About the Author

Steve Deadman - Customer Success Manager - EMEA
Steve provides support to customers and helps them get a strong return on their software investment. He has a B.Eng (Hons) degree in Mechanical Engineering and various certifications in engineering. Before joining Ideate Software, he worked at several top architectural firm in the United Kingdom where he specialized in the implementation and management of BIM processes and technology. Find Steve on LinkedIn.

At Ideate Software, we like to provide a wealth of support to our customers, either via our website, which has a ton of useful information, or within our products. For example, Ideate BIMLink ships with a great extent of preconfigured content; you get more than 350 predefined link definitions to help you get up and running as soon as possible.

All the content provided within Ideate BIMLink is displayed as shown below and can be manually imported as needed into the Revit project.

The Ideate BIMLink content is saved and loaded from this folder C:\ProgramData\Ideate\Ideate BIMLink\en-US\Samples

You might not be aware, but you can also load additional content for some of our other applications too, for example, Ideate ViewCreator, one of the tools in the IdeateApps collection.

Start from the settings cog and select Manage View Rules.

You can also import additional Room rules.

From here you can choose to import additional rules into your projects to help with your workflows. 

You can also Export custon rules from this dialog, for wider use within your company.

This opens a folder where you can load the additional rules that ship with Ideate ViewCreator. The default folder shown below, called Basic Rules, contains the list of rules that automatically import into any new Revit project where Ideate ViewCreator has been previously used.

Lots of additional content is available.

If that wasn’t enough, there is also a Bonus Rules folder! My favorite bonus rule within Ideate ViewCreator is the one called “DUPLICATE - Phase New.” This rule can be used to copy existing views to make '-New' views. Newly created views have a hard-wired Phase and Phase Filter override.

Bonus time!

For more information see our Help file on this topic.

Additional content is also available for Ideate ReNumber, another tool within the IdeateApps collection. See more in our Help file.  

Our European and UK customers might find the bonus rule called “Sheets - BS ISO 19650.rule” particularly valuable. This rule is designed to work with customer parameters within a title block as described in my earlier blog post, Renaming Sheets to ISO 19650.

For additional training tips, check out our Training blog series

Browse our website to learn more about how Ideate Software add-on products help Revit users save time, increase model accuracy, improve deliverables and elevate design. You can give them a try by downloading trial versions or purchasing the bundle for access to the Revit plugin solutions Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, Ideate StyleManager, and IdeateApps for six months. 

About the Author

Steve Deadman - Customer Success Manager - EMEA
Steve provides support to customers and helps them get a strong return on their software investment. He has a B.Eng (Hons) degree in Mechanical Engineering and various certifications in engineering. Before joining Ideate Software, he worked at several top architectural firm in the United Kingdom where he specialized in the implementation and management of BIM processes and technology. Find Steve on LinkedIn.

Ideate BIMLink can be utilized to batch rename and renumber sheets in your Revit project. The Revit interface has limitations in terms of editing large amount of data. Ideate BIMLink allows you to edit model data by exporting it to Excel and pushing it back into Revit. The basic steps for this process are covered in our Help topic: How to Batch Rename or Renumber Sheets.

If you need to tackle some more complex challenges, in this blog post I’ll highlight the power of Excel functions and formulas when utilizing Ideate BIMLink for sheet renumbering.

Here is an example:  

1. Utilize the adjacent column to enter the following formula, then drag down to autofill the values.
   
   =LEFT(A1,1)&"."&TEXT((RIGHT(A1,3)+10),"000")
   
   List of Excel functions utilized in this function:
    

   =LEFT(text,[num_char])	Returns the specified number of characters to the start of a text string
   =RIGHT(text,[num_char])	Returns the specified number of characters to the end of a text string
   &	Operator to concatenate string data by merging and combining
   “ ”	Converting operators, numbers or symbols into string
   +	Addition
   =TEXT(value,format_text)	Converts value into text into a specific number format

2. Copy the resulting information from column B and use the Paste Special>Values function to move the data back into Sheet Number column, save Excel, and import it back into Revit via Ideate BIMLink.
   
   
   
   This is the result: 
   
   

   
For additional training tips, check out our Training blog series.

Browse our website to learn more about how Ideate Software add-on products help Revit users save time, increase model accuracy, improve deliverables and elevate design. You can give them a try by downloading trial versions or purchasing the bundle for access to the Revit plugin solutions Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, Ideate StyleManager, and IdeateApps for six months. 

About the Author

Nivin Nabeel, Customer Success Manager, Americas

Nivin has a background in architecture, visual arts, and computer science and has extensive experience in managing and manipulating BIM data, developing and implementing BIM standards and workflows, and applying BIM workflows to ancillary project components for improved efficiency. Before joining Ideate Software, Nivin worked at several architecture and design firms where she learned about Ideate Software products, used them, advocated for them, implemented them, and trained others on how to use them. She earned her Bachelor of Architectural Science degree from Toronto Metropolitan University. Follow Nivin on LinkedIn.

Finally in Revit 2022, Autodesk reintroduced a PDF print driver for Revit years after removing it! Now you can create PDFs straight from Revit without using a plug-in such as Bluebeam or one of the many free PDF applications out there.

On the whole, the wizard is pretty good. I’m able to add custom parameters to the file name which is great…………no more renaming! In the UK we sometimes have to add the revision to the file name and the suitability code. This I can easily do within the Revit PDF export settings.

I can add parameter information as part of the naming rules within the PDF setup.

When you have created your set up, you can save the settings for quick and easy reuse.

Save export settings

When created, the resulting PDFs will have the additional parameters appended to the file, along with the Sheet Number.

Our new Ideate Automation solution enables users to automate the creation of PDFs by scripting the entire process. You can use a dynamic list of Sheets generated within Ideate BIMLink for Revit 2022+, and you can use the Sheet Set settings for Revit 2023+.  See more in our detailed Help file.

In addition, the first exercise in our Ideate Automation Getting Started Guide will walk you through the PDF creation process.

For additional training tips, check out our Training blog series

Browse our website to learn more about how Ideate Software add-on products help Revit users save time, increase model accuracy, improve deliverables and elevate design. You can give them a try by downloading trial versions or purchasing the bundle for access to the Revit plugin solutions Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, Ideate StyleManager, and IdeateApps for six months. 

About the Author

Steve Deadman - Customer Success Manager - EMEA
Steve provides support to customers and helps them get a strong return on their software investment. He has a B.Eng (Hons) degree in Mechanical Engineering and various certifications in engineering. Before joining Ideate Software, he worked at several top architectural firm in the United Kingdom where he specialized in the implementation and management of BIM processes and technology. Find Steve on LinkedIn.

Recently, I have been asked this question a lot, “Can I rename Revit Families using Ideate BIMLink?”

The answer is yes! You can! So, I thought a blog post about this topic was overdue.

Ideate BIMLink ships with over 300 pre-defined link definitions, and many of these links deal with project standards and quality assurance.

Ideate BIMLink ships with hundreds of link definitions

The link QC_MC_Family_Naming under 07 Quality Control allows you to rename Revit families using Excel. NOTE: This link is filtering out names that meet a COBie requirement to exclude spaces in the name. You can remove the filter to see all families if needed.

You can also rename Type names using some of our other links!

You can also customize the link to include or not include specific family categories so that the Excel output matches your requirements.

Use the Filters tab to refine your selections further.

Once in Excel, you can use a simple formula to change the family name. In this example I’ve added a prefix to the family name. You should use Copy/Paste to move the modified results into the Family Name column, and you can then delete column E before importing if you wish.

This method will ensure that your Revit family data matches your company standard or a client’s specific standard in a matter of minutes!

Note: Only component families can be renamed. System family names are not editable, but you can rename the types using another of our link definitions.

This blog post has more useful tips and information about managing Revit families.

Renaming Revit families and types has never been easier. Ideate BIMLink can also be used for lots more project standard tasks, check our Training blog series. for more information.

Browse our website to learn more about how Ideate Software add-on products help Revit users save time, increase model accuracy, improve deliverables and elevate design. You can give them a try by downloading trial versions or purchasing the bundle for access to the Revit plugin solutions Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, Ideate StyleManager, and IdeateApps for six months.

About the Author

Steve Deadman - Customer Success Manager - EMEA
Steve provides support to customers and helps them get a strong return on their software investment. He has a B.Eng (Hons) degree in Mechanical Engineering and various certifications in engineering. Before joining Ideate Software, he worked at several top architectural firm in the United Kingdom where he specialized in the implementation and management of BIM processes and technology. Find Steve on LinkedIn.