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Basic Scripting

Ideate Automation provides Ideate Software customers with programmatic access to our solutions through scripting. In this topic the basics of script editing are covered. For more advanced scripting help please contact our support team via email at [email protected].

Ideate Automation will install with several sample scripts that can be edited to fit your needs. These sample scripts install to C:\Program Files\Ideate\Ideate Automation\en-US\Samples by default and can be edited with any text editor such as Notepad. You can also change the location of your script library as described in Settings.

Some of the easiest items to edit within a script are:

Edit the task name or description

You should consider editing the task name or description to better serve the end user in their understanding of each script. The name of the script file itself can be edited within Windows Explorer to suit your needs. The task name can be more descriptive if needed. The purpose of the task name is to identify the task later in the task queue. Additionally the task name comes in handy for troubleshooting. The task name can also be manually edited during the task Create process, from the Confirm Task Selections dialog. The description helps the end-user understand the purpose of each script.

In the image below the <taskName> is ISW-Health_Check. If that value is changed in the script, it will impact the Task Name as shown in the dialog.

Edit the taskName and description variables, ensuring that your text fits between the > < characters and avoids the use of quotes.

Edit Variables and Options

Most scripts will have variables that define the Revit file or files to be referenced, a location for output, and a source for referencing product-specific content, such as the link definitions used within Ideate BIMLink. Some of the common script variables, and their related options, are outlined below.

In the script called IBL-QTO shown below, there is a variable called exportTemplate_file (#1) which references the name of the Excel file that will be used as a template which will be copied and renamed before the new data is exported. This pre-formatted Excel template file is optional.

To use your own template, include the full file and path name within the > < characters, replacing the ${Script.Folder}\Construction_QTO.xslx value.
To let the end user choose a new template file each time, change the prompting=”false” to prompting=”true”

The variable called export folder (#2) controls where the export data will be written

To hardwire a consistent path for your output, replace the >***Pick a Folder***< with your desired full folder path name.
To set a hardwire path that is user-specific you may use this syntax: %UserProfile% at the beginning of the file path. Refer to the script called “AUT-Revit_File_Data” for an example of this.
If you choose to set a valid path and do not want the user to change this value, change the prompting=”true” to prompting=”false”

Lastly, the Ideate BIMLink-specific variable called linksource_folder (#3)is used to point to a folder with the purpose of exporting data from each of the link definitions contained within that folder. The default value for the linksource_folder is ${linksource_folder_root}\02 Construction Links. One way to modify the quantity takeoff (QTO) output is to copy this Ideate BIMLink folder to another location, and then modify the content within the copied folder. We recommend leaving the linksource_folder value the same, but modify the folder path in the variable above, changing the value for linksource_folder_root from C:\ProgramData\Ideate\Ideate BIMLink\en-US\Samples\02 Discipline to the new root folder location.

The original “02 Construction Links” folder, contains approximately (15) link definitions, which will result in (15) tabs within the resultant Excel file. In your copied folder, you can remove any that are not needed.
If the parameters being exported from any of the links do not meet your needs, you can use Ideate BIMLink to modify the link definition and then re-save to the folder specified above.
If you want to rename your copied folder, make sure you also change the value for the linksource_folder to the new folder name.

TIP: For Ideate BIMLink scripts that use the linksource_folder method of loading links temporarily into a project, there is an option to control whether the imported link is allowed to override a links within the project (RVT). In the example below, you can change the <If Duplicate>OverrideExisting<If Duplicate> line to <If Duplicate>DoNotAdd<If Duplicate>. This will cause the imported links to only be used if one with the same name does not exist in the project. The example below is from the IBL-Document_Issuance script but is also applicable to scripts such as IBL-COBie and IBL-QTO.

For more advanced scripting help please contact our support team via email at [email protected].

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