A great reason to use Ideate BIMLink for Autodesk Revit is that it allows non-Revit users to contribute to the data side of the model. What do we mean by this? We mean that interior designs or consultants who don't have Revit can fill out important space and room information such as a finish schedule or the Specified Airflow values using plain 'ole MS Excel. We mean that the project manager who is busy traveling to job sites can edit the sheet list  information from the job trailer without having to access the project's .RVT file. Or, maybe it's the building engineer, onsite, who is reading barcodes from each installed piece of mechanical equipment and wants that data stored back into the as-built model. Ideate BIMLink is the perfect solution for all these scenarios. 

How does it work? We'll use the example of filling out the manufacture and model number for the mechanical equipment or specialty equipment. Bob is the engineer who owns Revit and uses a workstation, while Sue is the general contractor completing the as-built information. Sue is onsite with an iPad walking through the building to confirm each piece of data. Here's the basic procedure:

1. Bob exports the list of mechanical equipment from the Revit model using Ideate BIMLink.
2. Bob saves the .XLSX file into Dropbox.
3. Sue uses CloudOn with Dropbox on her iPad and sees the file Bob just posted.
4. Sue opens the .XLSX and walks around to verify the Manufacture and model number for each piece of equipment that's actually installed.
5. Some of the model number fields are missing or incorrect.  Sue edits them on the iPad.
6. When Sue is done Bob uses Ideate BIMLink to import the edited .XLSX data and push it back into Revit.
7. Now the Revit file data matches the as-built information and the owner gets a high-quality deliverable!

Give it a try; you can download a free Trial version of Ideate BIMLink and both Dropbox and CloudOn are free Apps for the iPad and iPhone. Note that CloudOn also works with Google Drive and with SkyDrive accounts.

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

Carpe Vista!; or Using View Templates in Revit 2013

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? Now in 2013 you can assign a View Template to a set of views and the elements within those Views will continually abide by the View Template rules! This goes a long way towards eliminating plotting errors by putting up a small roadblock for those who ponder setting overrides to a view's display settings. When a View Template is assigned in 2013, the corresponding Visibility Graphics (VG) dialog will appear as grayed out per this image. Initially this may cause some minor heartburn but in the long run, returning the visibility control over to the BIM Manager can only be a good thing!

My colleague, Shruti Harve, made this great video on how to manage the View Template settings in Excel using Ideate BIMLink 2013. All views will not need a View Template assignment, but taking the time to assign your floor and ceiling plans will be well worth the effort when it comes time to publish your project. Set aside some time today to look closely at this new Autodesk Revit 2013 feature. So with apologies my 8th grade Latin teacher - Carpe Vista! Post scriptum: for all you Windows Vista™ fans (?!) that's "seize the View"

This post was originally published on the Ideate Solutions Blog 04.26.2012

Every day, our Ideate Software Support team fields all types of questions from AECO professionals all around the world. 

Ideate Explorer has been a Revit user’s best friend for over 10 years! Since the first release of Ideate Explorer, Revit users have been using the application to show model elements that the default Revit Project Browser just does not show. Ideate Explorer is the model browser for almost every element within your Revit model.

One of the most loved features of Ideate Explorer is the ability to show both CAD links and CAD imports within the Ideate Explorer results tree. This feature gives the Revit user instant access to the location of CAD elements, even if they might be hidden within a view. Our built-in <Ideate Audit> filter allows quick access to these elements.

 
Well, you can imagine my surprise when we received a support case that Ideate Explorer was no longer displaying the CAD Links! I had to really think about this one.

CAD files such as MicroStation or AutoCAD can be either linked into Revit or imported. If you import the CAD file, it is the same as copying the file into your project. It becomes an element just like any other element you might place within Revit. Many firms have STRONG policies against importing CAD data because not only does it copy the geometry into your Revit file, it also copies linestyles, text and many other styles you may not want.

Our Ideate StyleManager is the perfect tool to help consolidate or eliminate those unwanted styles that may have come into your Revit project with a CAD import. However, that wasn’t the issue in this specific customer case!

The first thing we had to determine was if this was a CAD Link or CAD Import that was not displaying within Ideate Explorer. Even if the CAD import had been hidden, it would display within Ideate Explorer. If the CAD Import had been partially exploded, it would still show the non-exploded blocks such as this example with the Green Drain: 

If the CAD file had been selected as a full explode, the lines, arcs, and circles would have become Revit elements. Then, the CAD file would no longer be listed in the Ideate Explorer results tree, because it had basically been disassembled into component parts. So, I thought that might be the issue. The customer said there had been no modifications to the CAD file and it was linked into Revit rather than imported.

That only leaves one other solution.   

As I mentioned earlier, when the CAD file is imported into Revit, it is a copy that exists within the Revit model. When a CAD file is linked into Revit, there is no copy. It only exists as a reference, and it only exists when it is loaded. CAD files can be temporary unloaded to save on display time. When a CAD file is unloaded, the reference to the CAD location is saved, but the actual geometry is NOT displayed or loaded into Revit.

Sure enough, that is what had happened for this specific customer. Ideate Explorer properly showed all the CAD links when the CAD links had been loaded. Another user working on the project had unloaded all the CAD links, and thus Ideate Explorer did NOT show them.

Ideate Explorer is always showing the current elements of the Revit model. So unloaded CAD Links were not shown in the Ideate Explorer results tree. As soon as the CAD Links were loaded via the Manage Links dialog, they properly appeared within the Ideate Explorer results tree.

We have many Help topics related to CAD files. This topic is an excellent guide to removing hidden CAD files with Ideate Explorer. If you’ve already made the mistake of importing CAD files into your Revit project, this topic on Ideate StyleManager can make quick work of cleaning up your model or template.

So, never fear! Whether you link, import, or explode your CAD file, Ideate Software has the tools you need to quickly analyze and view the locations and then perform the cleanup if necessary. Please review this short video on Managing CAD Imports with Ideate Explorer and watch this 30-minute webinar presentation on using Ideate StyleManager to clean up your imported styles.

You never have to worry about your CAD data again!

Check out the other posts in our Ideate Software Support Series.

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.

Every day, our Ideate Software Support team fields all types of questions from AECO professionals all around the world. Questions about simplifying the process of creating views are fairly common, so in this post, I’ll show you some of the ways Ideate ViewCreator makes the process fast and easy.

Ideate ViewCreator has the power to efficiently copy plan views to other levels while maintaining settings such as view template assignment, scope box setting and even custom parameters that are often used to help sort views within the Project Browser. In addition, Ideate ViewCreator can assist users by bulk-duplicating views to other phases or to create working views. Like the Plans to Levels method, users can assign view templates, scope boxes and so much more. The possibilities are endless!

While Ideate ViewCreator allows users to create customized rules to meet their needs, Ideate ViewCreator also ships with many pre-configured rules as well. Many of these rules already meet and address the needs of many customers, as seen here:

 
For those interested in copying plan and ceiling plans up to multiple levels, consider using a special rule called *LEVEL, highlighted in the following image:

 
The *LEVEL rule has a special algorithm that can predict how to match the intended naming convention of selected views so they can be copied up to other levels while adhering to the naming conventions. 

For example, let us assume you are working on a project with eight levels (LEVEL 1, LEVEL 2, LEVEL 3, etc.) and you have the need for floor and ceiling plans for those levels. Let us also assume you have already created a LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL FLOOR PLAN and LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL CEILING PLAN with the correct View Template, scope box, view organization parameters, etc. already assigned. If your views and levels have the same naming conventions, such as LEVEL 1 as the level name and LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL FLOOR PLAN for the View name, then the *LEVEL rule in Ideate ViewCreator should be able to predict how to copy those plans to the other levels while adhering to the naming standards. 

The advantage of using the *LEVEL rule is that you can quickly bulk create views of different types (Floor Plan, Ceiling Plan, Structural Plan) quickly and efficiently with the same settings that were applied to the views that you copied.

In the following image, you can see how we copied the LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL FLOOR PLAN and LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL CEILING PLAN to LEVEL 2, LEVEL 3, on up to LEVEL 8. Looking at the New View column, you can see that the naming conventions match the copied views from the Original View column, which is exactly what we wanted to. It is worth noting that the *LEVEL rule works best when the Level name and view names use the same naming conventions.

 
There may be times in which the *LEVEL rule algorithm cannot predict the New View name as intended. This situation usually happens when the level name and Original View names differ slightly. In the following image, you can see that the New Level (the name of the level you want to copy to) is called LEVEL 2, but the Original View name has LEVEL 01 in it. 

In this case, you have a couple of options. The first option would be to review your view names and correct them so that the levels and views have the same naming convention, i.e., LEVEL 1 and LEVEL 1 MECHANICAL PLAN, not LEVEL 1 and LEVEL 01 MECHANICAL PLAN. Your other option would be to use the Find and Replace in Ideate ViewCreator to correct the new view name so you can proceed with creating the views.

In summary, if you are looking to bulk create many plan views easily and efficiently, consider using the *LEVEL rule. Keep in mind that this rule works best when the level name and view names have matching information. This will help the algorithm to predict how the rest of the view names should match.

Related topics:

• Ideate ViewCreator Help Page
• Copy Views to a Design Option using Ideate ViewCreator
• Create Sector Plans with Ideate ViewCreator

Browse our website for more information on our Revit productivity tools. Give them a try with a free trial version, or subscribe today. 

About the Author

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

What You Need to Know About Level Hosted Elements in Revit: How could these (fill-in-the-blank) just disappear from the project? They were there yesterday, and now they're gone! We don't see this happening too often, perhaps once per month, but when it does, it's a disaster. The BIM Manager usually assumes that Revit has a serious defect and is responsible for trashing the project while our support staff is inclined to assume that some user, unbeknownst to the BIM Manager, decided to randomly delete things and then not fess up. The truth is typically halfway between the two. The culprit is the lowly level line which, when deleted, will take with it any object that it hosts. The kicker is that Revit won't even warn you. Losing elements in a project can create days of lost effort. This is why auditing your level lines is Tip #4 from our Revit Project Auditing process. Training staff to not create their own level lines (this should be the domain of the BIM Manager or Project Manager only) will help avoid this problem in the first place, but if you do encounter extraneous level lines, watch the below Ideate Explorer for Revit video before you delete any levels!

See a video of our popular online class, Auditing Your Revit Project with Ideate Explorer. Ideate Explorer for Revit is an essential tool for Revit BIM Managers and is the best way to audit your Revit projects. Learn more on our website.

About the Author

Glynnis Patterson, NCARB - Director of Software Development
Glynnis is a Registered Architect and has worked within 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 consulting on solutions to Building Information Modeling challenges. In her spare time Glynnis does volunteer work for eclcofnj.org and growitgreenmorristown.org @GVPinNJ

This post was originally published on the Ideate Solutions Blog.