Ideate Software Announces New Version of Ideate Sticky for Autodesk Revit

PRESS RELEASE: San Francisco, CA, 1/26/2015 – Ideate Software, a veteran Autodesk Developer Network member, announced today that updates are available for Ideate Sticky for Autodesk Revit versions 2014, 2015 and 2016. Ideate Sticky imports and synchronizes Microsoft Excel file content into the Revit project environment. The updates to Ideate Sticky for Revit include significant enhancements and improvements.

In response to a top customer support request, visual fidelity has been improved by added support for Line Style Mapping. “Ideate Sticky user feedback was integral in the development of the features in this update,” says Glynnis Patterson, Ideate Director of Software Development. “We designed this to allow end-user control of the assigned line styles, as well as out-of-the-box default values to get our customers up and running with great results.”

Other improvements in this release of Ideate Sticky include:

• Added support for hidden rows and columns within your Revit project
• Designers and engineers can now use any Named Region as a way of defining a Sticky, an easy method for splitting a long Excel worksheet into separate 'pages'
• Versions 2015 and forward now support inclusions of an image, such as a company logo, within the header

Richard Taylor, Ideate Software Technical Evangelist says, “The ability to support embedded graphic images in the Microsoft Excel schedule, plus the ability to support many Excel line styles, will greatly enhance the graphic fidelity of the Sticky Schedule within the Revit environment, reducing the necessity for additional schedule editing.  Customers can easily link the Excel Schedule into Revit knowing that the proper formatting of fonts, graphic images, line styles, hidden rows and columns, and merged cells, will be handled by Ideate Sticky effortlessly and elegantly.” 

He adds, “No matter your discipline, Ideate Sticky allows you to extend the project team by providing the ability to link non-BIM Excel data directly into the Revit project.”

Bob Palioca, President, Ideate Software says, “Ideate Software is always listening and deeply involved in how are customers are using our Ideate Software solutions. The latest release of Ideate Sticky reflects that commitment to our customers.”

To ensure consistent graphic results, all Ideate Sticky end-users should be updated at the same time.

Ideate Sticky carries a five-star rating on the Autodesk App Store, and is available with a non-commercial free trial. Download the trial today.

For more information, call 888.662.7238, or contact sales@ideatesoftware.com

About Ideate Software

Ideate Software allows Autodesk Revit users to have unprecedented control over their data. Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer for Revit, and Ideate Sticky were all developed to solve persistent problems in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) workflows. Ideate Software solutions enable Revit users to save time, increase accuracy, improve Revit project deliverables, and elevate design.

Autodesk, Autodesk Revit and ATC are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries.

Microsoft Excel is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

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Ideate Software is Headed to RTC North America

RTC North America 2015 || July 23 - July 25

Ideate Software will be at RTC North America 2015 from Thursday July 23rd to Saturday July 25th. Please stop by our booth (#25) to meet us in person and discuss all things BIM and Revit related.

Glynnis Patterson, our Director of Software Development will be giving an advanced class on Revit Parameters titled: “I ♥ Revit Parameters” during session 3.1.

Richard Taylor, our Technical Evangelist will be presenting a class on cleaning up Revit models titled: "Auditing Your Revit Project" during session 2.1.

For more information on the presentations, as well as more details about RTC North America read more on the Ideate Software blog.

Check Your Fire Ratings with Ideate BIMLink

Did you know that Ideate BIMLink provides an abundance of additional Revit ‘related’ data that can enhance quality control processes? You may be familiar with this concept of related data, because it aligns with how Revit schedules work. Within a Revit schedule, for example, it is possible to create a schedule of Generic Model elements and also include related data about the Rooms or Spaces in which these elements are located. Within the Ideate BIMLink environment, however, a far richer list of related data is available. This opens up a wealth of possibilities for sophisticated data management. 

Look for “Select available properties from:” option found at the bottom of the “Available Properties” list within the Properties tab. For example, when editing a “Door” link you will see the drop-down option as shown in the image. 

The Door Type link with additional available properties shown

Note that Type-based links, such as a Door Type link, will have different options for the available properties. While instance data includes spatial data lists such as Level, Coordinates, Rooms, Spaces, etc., Type data will only include these (non-spatial) related data lists: Project Information and RVT Link.

The Door “instance” link with additional available properties shown

Many BIM Managers have shared with us the significance of this data to their quality control tasks and as they do so, we capture each of these workflows as a sample link definition. One such example can be found within the sample link called “Doors-Check_Rating”. This link, found in the \Architectural subfolder and shown below, highlights the use of one of these extra parameters: Host Wall: Fire Rating.

Finding “Doors-Check_Rating”

The inclusion of the fire rating property means that you will be able to view the list of all door instances alongside with the wall fire rating data. Now you can ensure that 2-hour walls have doors that are adequately rated.

View all door instances alongside wall fire rating data

This sample link is one of over 140 samples that ship with Ideate BIMLink. Be sure to look through this sample content to master your BIM data and build your own quality control processes.

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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 article was originally posted on the Ideate Software blog.

Ideate, Inc. Launches Ideate Sticky, a New Autodesk Revit Add-in Software Solution

San Francisco, CA, 2/3/2015–Ideate, Inc., a multi-decade veteran Autodesk Developer Network member and Autodesk Gold Value Added Reseller today announced the availability of a new Autodesk Revit add-in Ideate Software solution, Ideate Sticky for Revit, designed to work with Autodesk Revit 2015 and Autodesk Revit 2014. 

Ideate Software is a set of far-reaching Building Information Modeling (BIM) data management tools that help the Revit community clean up models, delete problem items, analyze files quickly, improve speed and accuracy in data flow, increase collaboration and overcome repeated workflow interruptions. 

Ideate Sticky combines the ease and flexibility of Microsoft Excel spreadsheet editing with the convenience of pasting a sticky back note. This unique utility enables users to create and post Excel worksheet contents within the Revit project while matching the Excel table cell content, format, and style with highest possible visual fidelity. 

“Revit schedules are the perfect tool to represent the data behind Revit elements, but until Ideate Sticky for Revit, organizing and formatting essential non-BIM data was frustrating and time consuming,” says Ideate Director of Software Development Glynnis Patterson. “Ideate Sticky provides a live link to Excel inside of Revit, along with a convenient way to display tabular data inside of Revit. Our customers’ needs for an ahead-of-the-pack text editor capability motivated our development of Ideate Sticky.” 

“More and more our Revit-using AEC customers need ways to present and share information for cross-discipline collaboration,” says Bob Palioca, President, Ideate Inc. “We are delighted to introduce Ideate Sticky, another important solution to help our customers succeed.” 

Ideate Software developers surveyed customers who tested Ideate Sticky about how many stickies they anticipated using on a per project basis. Dan Dankert, CAD/BIM Manager, Mead & Hunt, Madison, Wisconsin, answered, “10 to 30.” Similarly, when asked about ways customers envisioned distributing Ideate Sticky within their companies, Nancy McClure, BIM Consultant, Aperte Design, San Francisco, California said, “…Network license available to all users,” and Glen Walson, BIM Manager, Interface Engineering, San Francisco, California, said, “…distribute to all Revit power users… the individuals who do the most production work per team.” 

A non-commercial trial of Ideate Sticky software is available at http://ideatesoftware.com/download/. For more information, call 888.662.7238, or contact sales@ideatesoftware.com.

About Ideate, Inc.
Ideate, Inc. is a leading Autodesk Authorized Developer with 25+ years’ experience in software development and specific focus on Building Information Modeling (BIM). As an Autodesk solutions provider, Ideate has offered quality software, training, support and custom consulting services to the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industries since 1992. Headquartered in San Francisco, California and operating Autodesk Authorized Training Centers (ATCs) in California, Oregon and Washington, Ideate is recognized as an Autodesk Gold Partner for Architecture, Engineering and Construction, one of Autodesk’s highest levels of authorization.

Ideate Software is a comprehensive set of far-reaching BIM data management tools. Ideate BIMLink powers the “I” in BIM, allowing users to pull data from an Autodesk Revit file into Microsoft Excel for fast and precise editing, and push the data back into Revit with equal ease. Ideate Explorer for Revit lets users search, filter, quantify and select to easily manage the 100,000+ elements in a Revit model. Ideate Sticky for Revit combines the ease and flexibility of Excel spreadsheet editing and the convenience of posting a sticky note. All three solutions help Autodesk Revit users solve problems in AEC workflows and help the Revit community leverage BIM to its fullest advantage.

Autodesk, Autodesk Revit and ATC are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. Microsoft Excel is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

This post was originally published on the Ideate Software Blog.

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Going from the Field into Revit via Ideate BIMLink

Many Ideate BIMLink customers are leveraging coordinate data in new and exciting ways. In an earlier blog post we wrote about taking Revit data from the BIM and into the field and now, with the newest version of Ideate BIMLink (for both 2014 and 2015), we have added the ability to go from the field and into the Revit model. This means that the surveyor can go out and locate the actual spots for footings, columns, etc., and import that via Ideate BIMLink to update the model information to match the as-built surveyed data. 

‘Out-of-the-box’ content to support going between the field and the Revit model with coordinate data.

The “Generic_Model-Survey_Pts” link is just one of the out-of the box samples that ships with Ideate BIMLink and can be found within the Construction Links folder as shown. This link supports a workflow which exploits the new ability within Ideate BIMLink to relocate Generic Model and Mass elements by directly editing the XYZ values. 

Use Ideate BIMLink to edit the XYZ values of Generic Model instances to locate survey points within your Revit model:

 

Work-plane based Generic Model elements have editable XYZ values.

This process is documented within the online help topic. Let us know what you think AND also how else you’ll be leveraging your Building Information Model data with this new functionality! 

This post was originally published on the Ideate Software Blog.

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 worldwide, 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

Ideate, Inc. Announces New Ideate BIMLink for Revit Improvements

San Francisco, CA, 11/05/2014–Ideate, Inc., a multi-decade veteran Autodesk Developer Network member and Autodesk Gold Value Added Reseller today announced the availability of Ideate BIMLink 2015.1 and Ideate BIMLink 2014.4. These Ideate Software solutions bring an array of enhanced features [video] customers have requested and are designed to work with Autodesk Revit 2015 and 2014 respectively.

Ideate Software is a set of far-reaching Building Information Modeling (BIM) data management tools that help the Revit community clean up models, delete problem items, analyze files quickly, improve speed and accuracy in data flow, increase collaboration and overcome repeated workflow interruptions.

This recent Ideate BIMLink update lets BIM and Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) managers, project leaders, facility managers and other users access, analyze, extract and edit BIM data with speed, ease and accuracy. Users can quickly pull volumes of information from a Revit file into user-friendly Microsoft Excel and round-trip the data with equal ease.

Ideate Director of Software Development Glynnis Patterson says, “These new releases encompass the performance improvements industry professionals have requested. We make sure our BIM data management solutions are robust and our updates meaningful and frequent.”

Bob Palioca, President, Ideate Inc. says of the new Ideate BIMLink release, “As our AEC customers encounter heightened needs for collaboration across disciplines and greater client demands, we respond. This point release is evidence of our ongoing commitment to our customers’ success.”

Customers who tested the new features offered comments on the most valuable aspect of Ideate BIMLink to their workflows. Tay Othman, Job Captain for Gensler, noted greatest value in “Automation and extending Revit capabilities.” Erica Spicer, Project Coordinator at PDR said, “Having the model be the central up-to-date single point of truth for all schedule-related information.” And Dan Morrison, VDC Engineer for BPi - BGC POS International acknowledged, “Being able to manipulate data in ways that can’t be done within Revit.”

Ideate BIMLink carries a five star rating on the Autodesk Exchange Apps Store, and is available with a non-commercial free trial. For more information, call 888.662.7238, contact sales@ideatesoftware.com, and for support, contact support@ideatesoftware.com.

About Ideate, Inc.
Ideate, Inc. is a leading Autodesk Authorized Developer with 25+ years’ experience in software development and specific focus on Building Information Modeling (BIM).  As an Autodesk solutions provider, Ideate has offered quality software, training, support and custom consulting services to the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industries since 1992. Headquartered in San Francisco, California and operating Autodesk Authorized Training Centers (ATCs) in California, Oregon and Washington, Ideate is recognized as an Autodesk Gold Partner for Architecture, Engineering and Construction, one of Autodesk’s highest levels of authorization. 

Ideate Software is a comprehensive set of far-reaching BIM data management tools. Ideate BIMLink powers the “I” in BIM, allowing users to pull data from an Autodesk Revit file into Microsoft Excel for fast and precise editing, and push the data back into Revit with equal ease. Ideate Explorer for Revit lets users search, filter, quantify and select to easily manage the 100,000+ elements in a Revit model. Both solutions help Autodesk Revit users solve problems in AEC workflows and help the Revit community leverage BIM to its fullest advantage.

Autodesk, Autodesk Revit and ATC are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. Microsoft Excel is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

This post was originally published on the Ideate Software Blog.

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Batch Adding Shared Parameters to Revit Families

I’ve given several presentations now on the topic of Revit data management and in particular on the use of shared parameters and one of the consistent questions that I get is, “how can I push lots of parameters to Revit family files (.RFA)?” For those of you that are on Autodesk subscription, there’s a tool that does just that, though it’s a little difficult to find and navigate through. Here’s a recent link from Autodesk that mentions the tools, though surprisingly it omits this particular feature from the list.

After you locate and install the Revit Extensions you will find the tool hidden on the Extensions Tab under the Tools button. It’s called “Shared/Project Parameters” from the pull-down, but when it’s launched it will open a dialog that says “Shared Parameter Converter”. 

This image shows that I am asking the tool to read all of the .RFA files found within my “11 Specialty Equip” folder and that I am going to read particular parameters from my Shared Parameter file and push them into these families. The modified families will then be copied into a new folder called “Updated Specialty Equip” and the results of this work will be included in my “!test” folder as a log file.

The Shared Parameters Converter Dialog From
Revit Extensions (2014/2015)

In this example my goal is to transfer two new shared parameters into these families. The Configuration dialog looks like this: 

Shared Parameters Configuration Settings

To confirm that this worked, I then loaded all families into a single blank project file (.RVT). Revit supports multi-select for this process. You can also drag-drop from Windows.

Using a blank template file, load the modified families for review.

The results confirm the existence of these new parameters, but now I want to fill out the values. I can use Ideate BIMLink to complete this task. 

Editing the parameter values with Ideate BIMLink
and then importing back into the test file. 

Once the families are cleaned up, you can right-click from Family Browser to export them back to the desired folder location. 

Pushing multiple parameters to multiple Revit family files is a powerful function that is made possible by the Revit Extensions tool. Before you alter your families in this way you should be sure to consult with your BIM team and also to review whether the parameters truly need to be specified within the families themselves. You can read more on that topic, here: I ♥ Revit Parameters Part 1: Should It Be Shared?

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 worldwide, 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