The Most Useful Revit Plugins

1. We talk with our customers. Whether they have been with us since we first launched Ideate Explorer in 2008, recently partnered with us when we launched Ideate Automation to boost the power of our plugins, or anywhere in between, we talk with customers.

• We take the time to understand their needs before selling them a product, and we follow up with them after they have had it for a while to make sure it meets those needs.
• At the conclusion of every webinar we deliver, we ask attendees to tell us about any challenges they are having in Revit and if there are any features they’d like to see added to our products.
• We track all calls that come into our Support team and note any issues that our products don’t currently address. Our Software Development team reviews all the data to determine if new functionality or even a completely new product is needed.
• We work closely with a large group of beta testers who review our updates or new products while they are in the development stage, provide candid feedback, and then verify that everything works as expected before we launch them publicly

2. We are part of the Autodesk Community, which offers several ways to connect, find answers, share knowledge, build networks, and more, including the Community Forums, which are product discussion boards:

• Revit Architecture Forum - Share knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular Revit Architecture topics.
• Revit MEP Forum – Post questions and answers about Revit ducts, piping, plumbing, fire protection, electrical, and more.
• Revit Structure Forum – Hear from users about how to use this tool to improve collaborations on structural design and engineering tasks.
• Revit API Forum – Learn about this collection of programs and libraries that helps in building and integrating software to Revit to extend its functionality.
• Revit Ideas Forum - Share ideas for future product features directly with the Revit team and collaborate on existing suggestions with peers

3. We know Revit. Our Software Developers, Support team, Business Development managers, and Customer Success managers know Revit. We are architects, engineers, designers, and others who worked in industry before joining Ideate Software. 

We joined Ideate Software because we know and love BIM and Revit, and we want to help develop, sell, and support products that make them even better.

Quickly find and delete incorrect, obsolete, and hidden problem items—even imported or linked DWG’s. Find, refine, and revise elements, including those that aren’t in the Revit project browser. This functionality dramatically decreases the amount of time spent on model management and enhances model performance. Ideate Explorer comes with four additional features that will contribute to you models staying in top working order:

Don’t work inside of Revit to verify and/or edit data one element at a time. Instead, use Ideate BIMLink to export the data you need to review into Microsoft Excel where you can quickly view and accurately manipulate massive amounts of data in seconds. You can then use Ideate BIMLink to import the verified or updated data back into Revit, and the model will immediately update.  

Share accurate and formatted non-BIM data with your Revit teams by live-linking Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and PDF documents to the Revit file with Ideate Sticky. These “stickies” are easy to read, look nice, and can be easily updated within Revit when changes are made to the original files. Whether it’s building codes, consultant data, abbreviation lists, general notes, or any of the many other non-BIM data critical to a project’s success, you can be sure your team always has the current information. 

Eliminate problems caused by copying/pasting data from one Revit file to another when styles associated with the original file get copied along with the data. This can clog up the model with incorrect information that can take a long time to remove if working in Revit. You have to remove it, because extraneous data can create model performance problems. With Ideate StyleManager, you can quickly analyze, merge, and delete non-standard Revit styles, and you can use it to see view filters applied to views and to clean object and line styles and patterns, text, fonts, parameters, and more. 

Stop spending so much time on tedious tasks in Revit that, when performed on large complex models, can contribute to mistakes, rework, and frustrations. Automate hundreds of common tasks with the 10 tools that come in the IdeateApps collection: Ideate SpellCheck, Ideate Align, Ideate Clone, Ideate ViewCreator, Ideate SheetManager, Ideate Annotate, Ideate XRay, Ideate ReNumber, Ideate SmartDelete, and Ideate QuickSelect. 

Run time-intensive BIM tasks silently in the background on this desktop application while you spend your time on more meaningful work with Ideate Automation. Start it manually or schedule it to run at a convenient time, even overnight. Ideate Automation can increase your productivity, eliminate the need to train staff on repetitive tasks, and ensure task outcomes are highly predictable, free of user errors, and standardized.

Use Ideate Automation to: