June

10

2022

Healthy Revit models perform well. Unhealthy Revit models move slowly and there can be issues when opening, synchronizing, printing, exporting, upgrading, and more. Dealing with all the potential causes of an unhealthy model in Revit can be daunting. It’s not with Ideate Software. Our plugins enhance the capabilities of Revit software, making it easy to conduct regular audits, address issues, and keep models in good working order.

Watch the recording of our 30-minute webinar to learn about behaviors that can lead to model health issues and see demonstrations on how to use Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, and Ideate StyleManager to:

  • Perform QA and QC operations  
  • Review and address Revit warnings 
  • Review, merge, or eliminate unwanted styles 

Learn More

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.

Stay Connected

Check us out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

Contact Us

If you have any questions, reach out to us. We are here to help you understand and use our Revit plugin solutions. 


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.

 

 

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June

2

2022

We were delighted to host our first Revit Data Management Insights Group meeting in May. Attendees included BIM managers, heads of BIM, BIM coordinators, and Revit technicians from architectural and engineering firms in the London area. Steve Deadman, our UK/EMEA Customer Success Manager and Nick Johns, our UK/EMEA Territory Lead greeted both new and existing customers and shared insights on recent and upcoming product developments and industry feedback.
 
James Gray, Squire and PartnersIt was a pleasure to have James Gray, BIM Manager at Squire and Partners as a guest speaker.

A long-standing Ideate Software customer, James presented his best practices on Revit model management featuring the Ideate Software solutions he uses. He made the case for regular model reviews and the importance of managing and fixing warnings in Revit. The best practices he shared were very much appreciated by all the attendees.  
 
During this invitation-only event, we also covered topics such as: 

  1. Wishes Granted - Top User Requests and Implemented Features. Steve presented Autodesk Forum ideas and Revit Roadmap wish list items that we translated into software features revolving around Revit model productivity, project auditing, model/data health and data management. He focused on the following Revit user requests:
     
    • Controlling view title alignments
       
    • Quickly reviewing and fixing Revit warnings
       
    • Live-linking Excel, PDF, and Word documents into Revit projects

     Read our Wishlist Granted blog post series for more examples.

  1. New Features and Developments. During this section of the meeting, we announced and offered a flavour of the upcoming Ideate Software improvements for Revit versions 2020-2023. Watch our blogs for more news!

The discussions continued after the presentations around canapés and wine, and we’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our attendees for their presence, questions, and glowing feedback. We look forward to the next Revit Data Management Insights Group meeting. More details to follow in due course.

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.

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April

18

2022

We are pleased to once again have the opportunity to connect with people who design, build, operate, and maintain our built environment at the BILT Americas conference. Attendees of this three-day event held June 14 - 16 in Anaheim, California, will choose from more than 90 sessions, all focused on the use of best-in-class tools, processes and workflows, behaviors, and leadership. 

When registering, be sure to sign up for “Are Your Revit Templates and Standards a Little Old and Crusty?” and “Demystifying Datums and Scope Boxes Within Revit,” by our Technical Evangelist Richard Taylor. 

While at the conference, stop by booth #716 to meet the Ideate Software team, discuss your Revit challenges, and learn about our plugins that solve persistent Revit challenges.

Session Summaries

Are Your Revit Templates and Standards a Little Old and Crusty? 

BIM managers, project managers, BIM standards committee members, and end users in charge of creating and maintaining Revit project and template standards will appreciate the lessons on strategies and tactics for managing Revit standards without giving up the control needed to maintain quality. You’ll learn about: 

  • The importance of quality standards
  • Content and settings that should be part of Revit templates and families
  • How styles, such as object style subcategories, fill patterns, viewports, etc. can find their way into projects
  • Dangers of brute-force cleaning and purging
  • Revit template cleaning techniques 

Richard Taylor - Ideate SoftwareDemystifying Datums and Scope Boxes Within Revit

Grids, levels, and reference planes are the backbone of a good building information model.  As designers, we use a whole series of annotative elements that help us understand and navigate through a complex web of 2D and 3D element connections. Datums such as grid lines and reference planes can seriously impact Revit geometry and Revit views and are often driven by scope boxes and other non-intuitive elements. After completing the session, you will have a better understanding of: 

  • How datums such as grid lines and reference planes can impact geometry and elements in 2D and 3D views
  • How scope boxes within Revit can control specific view information as well as datum information
  • View references and data that can be constructed within the family environment that may impact datum information
  • How to clean up, quality control, and review datum information

We hope to see you at the BILT Americas conference this June!


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Ideate Software Around the World

If you will not be in California during the BILT Americas conference but want to connect with Ideate Software, you will have plenty of other opportunities over the next several months. Come see us virtually or in person to experience first-hand how our plugins for Revit streamline workflows, improve collaboration, and help Revit users around the world deliver better designs faster.

Below is some information about some upcoming conferences where we will be exhibiting and presenting. More events will be added to our schedule, so keep an eye on the Events page on our website.

  • Event: London Revit User Group Meeting
    Date: April 19, 2022
    Location: Live and Online
    Description: The London Revit User Group (LRUG) meets every other month to promote peer-to-peer support and networking for Revit users, both current and potential.

    Steve Deadman, our UK/EMEA Customer Success Manager, will be a presenter at the April meeting. He will discuss Revit parameters, including how and when to use shared and project parameters as well as some of the new features in Revit related to parameters, such as global parameters, project-shared and family-shared parameters in key schedules, and new parameters unit types.
     
  • Event: Advanced Revit Model Health Checks Webinar – UK/EMEA
    Date: June 14, 2022
    Location: Online
    Description: Revit model health is important. As models grow, they get more complex. As deadlines approach and more people are added to the design team, it can be tempting to let a focus on modelling and drafting standards slip to the wayside. Unfortunately, this practice can lead to unhealthy, bloated models that become difficult to work with and full of warnings and unused or improperly used data.

    This webinar, which will be led by Steve Deadman, our UK/EMEA Customer Success Manager, and Nick Johns, our UK/EMEA Territory Lead, is scheduled at a time convenient for those in the UK/EMEA region and will be recorded. The link to the recording will be included in a related blog post about a week after the event, so those that can’t attend the webinar can benefit as well. Attend it to learn how to use Ideate Software plugins for Revit to:
     
    • Perform QA and QC on various categories of Revit models
    • Review and address Revit warnings
    • Review, merge or eliminate unwanted styles
    • Ensure models are organized
       
  • Event: BIM Coordinators Summit 
    Date: September 8, 2022
    Location: Dublin, Ireland and Virtual
    Description: We are the Gold Sponsors of the 2022 BIM Coordinators Summit, which celebrates BIM Coordinators, BIM Managers, Information Managers, and AEC professionals responsible for producing, managing, and coordinating information about buildings and infrastructure. 

    Our UK/EMEA Customer Success Manager, Steve Deadman, will present “Advanced Revit Model Health Checks and Warnings Management” on the Data Governance Stage. This presentation, designed for BIM managers, BIM coordinators, and end users in charge of Revit models, will feature strategies and tactics for ensuring models are kept lean and in good health, including: 
     
    • The importance of addressing health concerns and performing regular health checks
    • Key areas to include in Revit model health checks
    • Features that can lead to poor model health
    • Warnings that can be critical to project projects and those that can be ignored
    • Visualizing health check data in Power BI
       
  • Event: BIM World Munich 2022
    Date: November 22 - 23, 2022
    Location: Munich, Germany
    Description: People from the D-A-CH (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) region that work in the construction, real estate, and urban development industries attend this leading annual networking conference. Started in 2016, this year’s conference is expected to attract 8,000+ people who will have access to more than 200 exhibitors and 150 presentations. While at the event, be sure to stop by the Ideate Software booth to discuss your Revit challenges and Ideate Software solutions with Nick Johns, our UK/EMEA Territory Lead and Steve Deadman, our UK/EMEA Customer Success Manager.

Stay Informed

Ideate Software hosts frequent webinars and participates in webinars, events, user group meetings, and conferences at various locations around the world. To stay informed of our activities, please check out the Events section of our website. We update it regularly as we add new webinars hosted by us, by other companies that feature our Revit add-in solutions, virtual events, and in-person conferences.  

Stay Connected

Check us out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.


 


 

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April

15

2022

“People are eager to learn about technology that can help them do their jobs better,” said Nick Johns, Ideate Software’s UK/EMEA Territory Lead. “We had a consistent flow of Revit users stopping by our booth to see how our plugins can help them, their teams, and their companies stand out from their competitors for both talent and customers.”

Nick Johns - UK/EMEA Territory Lead - Ideate SoftwareJoining Nick in the booth was Steve Deadman, our UK/EMEA Customer Success Manager and representatives from CAD UC, our official partner in France. “Visitors appreciated that they could learn about our products in their native language,” said Steve. “Our website and products are available in six languages, including French, and our printed literature was in French as well. In addition to seeing the power of our tools, they got to see that Ideate Software invests in the customer experience.”

While visiting the booth, attendees saw demonstrations of:

Steve Deadman - UK/EMEA Customer Success Manager - Ideate SoftwareAbout BIM World

Professionals who use BIM and digital technologies meet at BIM World to learn about industry trends and best practices. In addition to visiting the booths of top BIM solutions providers, attendees had the opportunity to hear keynote speeches from industry leaders and to choose from nearly one hundred workshops and conferences, including several hosted by Autodesk.  

Learn More about Ideate Software

Browse our website for more information about our Revit productivity tools. Try them out with a free trial or subscribe today.

Stay Connected

Check us out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

If you have any questions, reach out to us. We are here to help you understand and use our Revit plugin solutions. 
 

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April

8

2022

Revit users from around the world submit feature requests to Autodesk through several official forums such as Revit Ideas, Autodesk Community, and the Revit Roadmap wishlist. Ideate Software pays attention! When developing new Revit plugin tools or enhancing existing tools, we dig into the forums to find out what real Revit users want, and we create tools that deliver. 

To call attention to our close connection to Revit users and to highlight a few of the Revit challenges we have solved, we posted a monthly blog series in 2021, which you can find by selecting the Series – Wishlist Granted link on our Blog page. Or, to see short demonstrations of 10 of the workflows featured, you can watch the recording of this webinar

Here’s a list of the requests addressed by Ideate Software tools and demonstrated in this webinar:

  1. Duplicate a Revit sheet while creating new views or swapping existing views of the sheet
     
  2. Control the view title alignment when aligning or swapping views on a sheet.
     
  3. Ease the documentation process with the help of the sheet and view tools
     
  4. Easily find elements that may be hidden in the Revit model
     
  5. Renumber almost any Revit element with intelligent rules and various methods for selection
     
  6. Implement a fully functional Revit spell checker that checks all sheets and views plus schedules
     
  7. Audit Revit models and select elements more easily
     
  8. Quickly review and fix Revit warnings to ensure a well performing model
     
  9. Manage, analyze, merge, and purge complicated Revit styles 
     
  10. Live link Excel, PDF, and Word documents into your Revit project

 
Browse our website to learn more. Download a free trial or subscribe today

Stay Connected

Check us out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.
 


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 20 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 and LinkedIn.

 

 

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