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  • Create a Power BI Dashboard

    • Create a Power BI Dashboard

    This help file outlines how to export model health data from a Revit file using Ideate Automation and display it in Power BI. This process will reduce the amount of hands-on time needed in order to ensure project stability and consistency across your Revit project files. The starting PowerBI template from Ideate can be modified to suit your company’s needs.

    Contents:

    Software Requirements
    Initial Setup
    Ideate Automation
         Create the Ideate Automation task
         Set the script variables
         Start Automation task
    Power BI
         Loading data into PowerBI
         Using the PowerBI template for different projects
         Visualizations 
    Migrating to Automation 3.0 and PowerBI 3.0   

    Software Requirements

    Before you begin, check that your setup can meet these requirements:

    Initial Setup

    The PowerBI template and associated files can be requested by Ideate Software subscription customers. You will receive an email from Ideate Software support with a download link.

    Download the zip file, unpack it and double click the Ideate Dashboard Files.exe. Pick ‘Unzip’ to place the contents in the default location. 

    The Ideate Health Check folder will be created on your ‘C:\’ drive, containing the following subfolders:

    Ideate Automation

    Create the Ideate Automation Task

    1. Launch Ideate Automation. The shortcut can be found on your Desktop after installation.
    2. Select Create to start a new task.
    3. Pick the script “ISW-Health_Check-PowerBI” in the “C:\ProgramData\Ideate\Ideate Automation\Custom Scripts\PowerBI” library. This script was placed here by the Ideate Dashboard Files.exe
    4. Review the description of this task and note the product requirements, then pick Next.

    Set the Script Variables

    Fill in the required script variables:

    Review the defaults and the optional variables:

    Select Next, then review the script inputs on the Confirm Task Selections page. 

    Start the Automation Task

    1. Before you start the task, ensure that all changes have been Synced with Central. When you are ready to proceed, pick ‘Save and Run’. This will start Revit and proceed to export data. The Status field will indicate the task In Progress or Pending, if you already have another one running.
    2. Once the task is finished, you should see a ‘Completed’ status on the Home page. At this point you can use the R-click menu or the Schedule button to set a regular repeat of this task, or pick ‘Clone’ to change some of the variables as needed.
    3. The result of this process is a uniquely named Excel file for each of the selected Revit files, located in the Data Folder.

    Power BI

    Loading Data into Power BI

    The Ideate Dashboard — v3_0.pbit  is the template file containing the dashboard visualizations.

    1. Open the .pbit file with Power BI, either by double-clicking on the file or in Power BI, select File>Open Report>Browse Reports. Be sure to change file type to Power BI template files (.pbit) when browsing for the template. After starting Power BI, a dialog shown below will appear.
    2. Enter the Data Folder path (custom or C:\Ideate Health Check\Time Stamp) and Select ‘Load’

    1. If you see a pending change to queries, select Apply Changes.
    2. It is a best practice to refresh the data in Power BI — Home Tab > Queries Panel > Refresh.
    3. Once the data loads, you can save it with a name that follows your company standards as PowerBI files (.pbix) to a folder associated with a specific project
    4. When opening the .pbix file, you need to Refresh the data to add any newly created exports into the visualization list.

    Using the PowerBI template for different projects

    The automated exports for different projects should be set up to be saved to project specific folders. Please make sure to not store any other files in these or the Power BI query will not function correctly.

    1. Create your folder structure like this:
    2. Open the Ideate_Dashboard template file 
    3. Set the Folder path to the project-specific data folder
    4. Once the data is loaded, save as a .pbix file. Save it in a different subfolder from your data exports!
    5. Now you can make a project-specific shortcut to the .pbix file directly on your desktop or put them all in a holding folder. 
    6. The two paths necessary for the template to function are managed here:
      • The visualization Metric file:
      • The Data Source Folder (./Time Stamp by default)

     

    Visualizations

     

    Migrating to Automation 3.0 and PowerBI 3.0 Template

    The version 3.0 contains major updates to the data exports utilizing Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer and Ideate Annotate. The updated ISW-Health_Check-PowerBI script no longer ships with Ideate Automation; it can be requested by Ideate Software subscription customers instead. The script itself has been redesigned to allow more flexibility and supports scheduling directly in the Automation UI. 

    If you had Automation Tasks utilizing the previous iteration of the PowerBI script, they need to be recreated using the new script. Following the request, you will get an executable that will place files in C:\ProgramData\Ideate\Ideate Automation\Custom Scripts\PowerBI and here C:\Ideate Health Check 
    These include the script file and BIMLink definitions optimized for the new PowerBI 3.0 template.

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