January 29, 2015

Introducing Ideate Sticky

Ideate Software is proud to announce the launch of our newest Revit add-in, Ideate Sticky. 

What's a Sticky? 
Did you ever want to link an Excel file into a Revit project? Ideate Sticky is the answer. 

The name "Sticky" harkens back to the ancient (i.e. late 20th century) technique of duplicating printed tables or details onto translucent adhesive-backed plastic film ("sticky back paper") and applying it to a drawing sheet. 

Why did we create Ideate Sticky? 
Back in 2009, we had an inkling that many of our clients were using or trying to use Microsoft Excel as part of their BIM toolkit. 

Researching our past support issues, we confirmed that many of our clients were looking for tools that could connect an Excel spreadsheet with a Revit project. Looking closer, we realized that there was two broad use cases for these tools. 

In late 2010 we released Ideate BIMLink , which handles the first use case - linking data in an Excel spreadsheet to the data in a Revit model. Think of this as using Excel to extend and edit the Revit building information model. 

Newly released Ideate Sticky handles the second use for connecting Excel and Revit - linking formatted text in an Excel spreadsheet to formatted text in a Revit project. Think of this as creating and formatting tabular text in Excel, then displaying the results on a Revit sheet. 

Creating and linking a Sticky is somewhat akin to linking a DWG drawing into a Revit model - the information is created and stored in a file external to the Revit project, but the results are linked and displayed in the Revit project.

Ideate Sticky - Formatted Code Requirements
What will you Sticky? 
Ideate Sticky can be used to display many types of non-BIM tabular text in Revit including: 
  • building codes specifications 
  • general notes 
  • consultant data 
  • abbreviation lists 
  • document issue records 
How did we do it? 
With lots of hard work! Ideate Sticky has been over a year in development and builds on all the technology and knowledge gained by the Ideate Software team over the past 8+ years of developing add-ins for Revit. 

Under the hood, a Sticky is actually a Revit schedule - with a twist. The Ideate Sticky add-in creates an empty Revit schedule (i.e. a schedule with no body text) and then manages the cells, formatting, and text within the schedule header. The result? A lightweight, native Revit object that supports formatted tabular text as in Excel. 
Ideate Sticky Help
What are the features? 
Excel spreadsheets rendered with native lightweight Revit schedules 
Excel formatting preserved with high fidelity 
Revit updated automatically or manually when Excel spreadsheet changes 

How can I learn more?
Download a free trial, view helpful overview videos, see the detailed help files, get the overview on our website, or contact sales today!



Ben Bishoff
Senior Software Developer
Ben has been a software engineer for over 25 years. With a Bachelor’s degree in Physics, he has worked at several software companies developing applications for the AEC industry including Sage Timberline (construction accounting and estimating) and ArchT (architectural drafting for AutoCAD). He also worked at Microsoft creating AEC and other diagramming solutions for Office Visio. Ben has been with Ideate Software for over 8 years developing add-ins for Revit including Ideate Explorer and Ideate BIMLink.


This article was originally posted on the Ideate Software blog.
 



January 28, 2015

Events: Applying BIM to a Historic Structure

Revit User Groups - Join us in February to explore the San Francisco War Memorial Veterans Building. Built in 1932,  it is one of the last major American Buildings constructed in the Beaux–Arts style. Standing across the street from the City Hall, it is part of a state and local historic district, and is a designated local historic landmark. In 2011, the City of San Francisco initiated a $96 million renovation project, driven by the need for a seismic upgrade. The project team used Revit for coordination purposes during design. The contractor used both Navisworks and Tekla for coordination during construction. Major structural work is now complete, and the project is on schedule to open later this year. This presentation will focus on the costs and benefits of applying BIM to a historic structure, as well as the unique challenges the team faced during construction.

Pre-Presentation Lunch & Networking
          ...Provided by Ideate...
          11:30 AM - 12:00 PM

February 10 :: Applying BIM to a Historic Structure
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

AIA Central Valley
1400 S Street
Suite 100
Sacramento, CA 95814

Register Now!

February 11 :: Applying BIM to a Historic Structure
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

AIA SAN FRANCISCO
130 Sutter Street
Suite 600
San Francisco, CA 94104

Register Now!

February 17 :: Applying BIM to a Historic Structure
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

AIA East Bay
1405 Clay Street
Oakland, CA 94612

Register Now!


About the Presenter

Benjamin Mohr
Senior Structural Engineer – SGH

Benjamin Mohr is a senior structural engineer at SGH. He has over nine years of structural design experience, and specializes in seismic retrofits. He has masters degrees in both architecture and structural engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Benjamin participated in peer review committees for two–rise projects, and is an active member in the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California. He spent three years working on the expansion and retrofit of the San Francisco State University Library, which won both state and national awards for engineering excellence.





January 26, 2015

eLearning - Upcoming Revit, ReCap, and Ideate Software Classes


Join the Ideate Tech Experts for eLearning – live online classes that provide your entire organization with easy access to premium education. 
1.28::Revit 201:
Working with Materials in Revit
2.6::Revit 201:
Rapid Detailing
2.10::Infrastructure 201:
Working with ReCap
2.13::Revit 201:
Worksharing Best Practices
2.17::Revit 201:
Working with Wall Types in Revit Architecture
2.18::Ideate Software:
Revit Auditing with Ideate Explorer for Revit
2.19::Ideate Software:
Revit Auditing with Ideate Explorer for Revit
Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

Click here for class descriptions, times and registration link. Questions? Contact education@ideateinc.com

Get It. Know It. Use It.

Classroom Training - Open Revit Architecture and AutoCAD Architecture Classes


Know It. Ideate Training.

Position yourself to land dream projects. Tap the full potential of your software solutions. Increase your facility, fluidity and capability to maximize the value of your precision software tools.
2.3-2.4::Seattle
Revit Architecture Beyond the Basics
2.10-2.12::Portland
Revit Architecture Fundamentals
2.10-2.12::Sacramento
Revit Architecture Fundamentals
2.10-2.12::San Francisco
AutoCAD Fundamentals

2.17-2.19
::San Francisco

Revit Architecture Fundamentals
2.18-2.19::Portland
Revit Architecture Beyond the Basics
Know your software. Sign up now!

January 23, 2015

Sifting Through Unreferenced View Tags in Revit – Part 2

In the first part of this two part blog post, I introduced a way to graphically identify unreferenced views by applying a red color to view tags that have not been placed on sheets. The process is fairly straightforward: create a filter for callouts, sections and elevations with a blank sheet value and then apply a red color to those tags. If you wanted to keep this filter consistent from view to view, then you can add these filters and color rules to your view templates.

But what if you wanted to customize your section, callout and elevation tags so that they displayed TEMP or TEMP VIEW in the tag itself? Well, the good news is that you can easily do so with very little effort! If properly created, you can even have the views automatically categorize themselves within the project browser without the need for a custom browser organization.

From time to time, it is a good idea to remove unwanted views since they contribute to increased file sizes. With this method, it will be very easy to identify and remove unwanted views from your model. In addition, since the temporary views will be unreferenced, they will not print due to the hide unreferenced view tags settings in the print dialogue box.


To build the temporary tags, you will need to go to Manage > Additional Settings and select the type of tag you want to create. In this example, we will focus on Section & Callout Tags. Elevation tags are similar but the tag creation requires a custom body and pointer family first.




To create the temporary section head, simply edit your standard section head family and remove all of the detail reference labels. You will then replace the reference labels with text (TEMP, or TEMP VIEW) since these views will not be placed on sheets. Be sure to save this family with a new name since you do not want to overwrite your standard section head family. In this case, I saved this family as Section Head – Filled Temporary.rfa. Once saved, load the family into your template. Note: This process is the same for the callout head.

  
Now that you have created your temporary tag families (section, callout or both), you can now build the tag. To do so go to Manage > Additional Settings and select the type of tag you want to create. In this example, I duplicated my building section tag and renamed it so that it had the word Temporary in it. I then swapped out the Section Head - Filled for the Section Head – Filled Temporary family file that I just loaded into my template. I left the Section Tail as is since it is graphically appropriate. Note: This process is the same for the Callout Tag.



Once you have built the Temporary Section tag (and/or callout tag) you are now ready to assemble those tags as a section type. In this example, I duplicated the Building Section system family, then renamed it as Temporary Section. Once renamed, I applied the temporary Callout Tag and Section Tag that I created earlier. Note: This process is the same for the Plan and Detail Callout Tag.


 
 
Now that you have created the Section and Callout Type, you are ready to use them in your drawings. Here is an example of the Temporary Section and Temporary Detail Views categorized without any customization to the project browser. Finding these views is easy and will allow you to make an informed decision on which views to keep and which views to delete.
 




Here is an example of the Temporary Section and Temporary Detail Views in your model. As you can see, it is really easy to distinguish between the views on sheets and the temporary views. Since these views are unreferenced, you can apply the filtering rules from the Part 1 blog post and color these sections to further distinguish the various view types.
 

 
 




Sash Kazeminejad, ACI, LEED AP
AEC Senior Application Specialist
Sash brings proficiency in Autodesk solutions including AutoCAD and Revit Architecture to Ideate customers. His industry experience includes project management, BIM Management, and design for Architectural firms in California, Montana and Oregon. He is LEED accredited professional and is on track to achieve California licensure with Oregon to follow. In his academic life, Sash was awarded a variety of college scholarships, earned a BA in Environmental Design, a MA in Architecture from Montana State University (MSU) and taught Building Information Modeling courses at MSU Gallatin College. As a Revit Architecture Autodesk Certified Instructor, Sash provides Revit Architecture training and support for AEC firms. @sashpdx

Get it. Know it. Use it.


January 21, 2015

Events: Pre–design Revit Roundtable Discussion

Revit User Groups - Happy New Year from Ideate! We are kicking off the 2015 year with a moderated discussion on Revit and pre-design tasks. Whether the challenge is architectural programming, space planning, or other conceptual design tasks, most would argue that Revit is not an ideal pre-design tool. With each company approaching this topic differently, we want to share each other's ideas and experiences.

January 26 :: Pre–design Revit Roundtable Discussion 
1:30 PM - 3:30 PM

AIA SAN FRANCISCO
130 Sutter Street
Suite 600
San Francisco, CA 94104

Register Here

January 27 :: Pre–design Revit Roundtable Discussion 
11:30 AM - 1:30 PM

AIA East Bay
1405 Clay Street
Oakland, CA 94612

Register Here

Come prepared to discuss these questions:
  • Are you actively using Revit as part of your pre-design process? If so, which elements are being used and what are the pros and cons?
  • What are some ways architects might use Rooms, Areas, Spaces, or Masses?
  • Ways engineers might use Masses or other elements?
  • Which third party tools are you using to manage pre-design process?
  • Regardless of your pre-design solution, what are the challenges in taking that information and moving it forward into the schematic design

Sash Kazeminejad, ACI, LEED AP
AEC Senior Application Specialist
Sash brings proficiency in Autodesk solutions including AutoCAD and Revit Architecture to Ideate customers. His industry experience includes project management, BIM Management, and design for Architectural firms in California, Montana and Oregon. He is LEED accredited professional and is on track to achieve California licensure with Oregon to follow. In his academic life, Sash was awarded a variety of college scholarships, earned a BA in Environmental Design, a MA in Architecture from Montana State University (MSU) and taught Building Information Modeling courses at MSU Gallatin College. As a Revit Architecture Autodesk Certified Instructor, Sash provides Revit Architecture training and support for AEC firms. @sashpdx

Get it. Know it. Use it.


January 12, 2015

eLearning - Upcoming Civil 3D, Revit MEP, and Ideate Software Classes


Join the Ideate Tech Experts for eLearning – live online classes that provide your entire organization with easy access to premium education. 
1.13::Civil 3D 201:
Data Short Cuts
1.15::Civil 3D 201:
Intro to InfraWorks

1.20::
Ideate Software
:
Revit Project Management with Ideate BIMLink
1.21::Ideate Software:
Ideate BIMLink for Revit MEP Projects
1.22::Revit 201:
Documenting Your Project in Revit MEP
Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

Click here for class descriptions, times and registration link. Questions? Contact education@ideateinc.com

Get It. Know It. Use It.

Classroom Training - Open AutoCAD and Revit Architecture Classes


Know It. Ideate Training.

Position yourself to land dream projects. Tap the full potential of your software solutions. Increase your facility, fluidity and capability to maximize the value of your precision software tools.
1.20-1.22::San Francisco
Revit Architecture Fundamentals
1.20-1.22::San Jose
AutoCAD Fundamentals
1.21-1.23::Seattle
Revit Architecture Fundamentals

1.27-1.28
::Seattle

AutoCAD Beyond the Basics

2.3-2.4::San Francisco
Revit Architecture Beyond the Basics
Know your software. Sign up now!

January 7, 2015

Carriage Returns in REVIT Schedules

The term Carriage Return was originally coined after the lever mechanism used by old typewriters to return to the left and advance the paper to the next line.  In modern times, the concept seems to be used interchangeable between Line feed (LF) -the ASCII code (10) that move the cursor or a printer down one line (LF button in dot-matrix printers), followed by paragraph break or hard return.in current word-processing packages. Regardless of the terminology variation, when editing text notes or schedules in Revit you often need to add carriage returns. This is easily done by clicking the ENTER key.

The ENTER key breaks a text note.

Carriage returns in Schedules are a different story. Pressing the ENTER key while editing a cell in schedule would not create a carriage return, but close the edit mode of a cell. The widely known workaround is using the shortcut CTRL+ ENTER.
The CTRL + ENTER key combination would create a carriage return.

While CTRL+ENTER does work, editing the cell  to add the desire break is really cumbersome.  The schedule view would never display stacked lines, only single lines. The up and down arrow keys won’t jump the cursor to the paragraphs below, nor the PgDN or PgUP.  The only way to make edits across multiple paragraphs is by dragging the cursor to the right or left and clicking the forward or backspace as many times as needed to get to the appropriate character.

Dragging a selection of text to the cell border would move the cell string to a different paragraph line.
The drop down arrow selector on right side of the cell will reassign the text to either one of the paragraph and delete the rest. CTRL+ENTER would assign for each paragraph an independent choice. Do not use or you will have to retype the entire text note.

Do not use the drop down arrow selector in a multi-paragraph note. It will keep a single paragraph and remove the rest.
Troubling as it is, while editing multiline cells is possible, you cannot add an empty line at the end of the paragraph. The CTRL + ENTER combination at the end of a paragraph in a cell will not create a carriage return, a major formatting drawback and a long standing feature request… or is not?

We researched the issue and found a workaround reported by some users who were able to add an empty line by adding the ASCIII ‘empty space character’ code at the end of carriage return. (CTRL+ENTER followed by ALT+0160).  I was, for some reason, unsuccessful to make it work, at least on my installed RAC 2015 R2 version.

But one way I make this work (or faking it to work?) is by adding a parameter that creates an invisible narrow column with enough character values to force the return.  Here is the workaround:  I created a new parameter of the integer type, added a number of characters equal to the number of lines plus one, and reduce the column width to a single character.

Create a blank space at the end of a cell, add a parameter that create a narrow invisible column with a number of characters equal the number of lines plus one, and change the column font color to RGB 254-254-254.
RGB Color 254,254,254 will never print.

To make the column invisible, change the font color. Changing to color to true white directs REVIT to display it in Black, therefore, change color to RGB 254,254,254 which is technically a grey color so light that it would never print.  




For lengthy schedules with various paragraph lines per cell, this method would be somewhat tedious. The task, though, would be far easier if we could make the edits in Excel. Using Ideate BIMLink, you can export the data to an Excel Spreadsheets and add the ‘invisible’ characters there.
Edit all your keynotes descriptions in Excel, making sure you add manually the ‘carriage return’ where needed. In Excel, the carriage return is added manually using the ALT+ENTER combination.

The idea is to create populate the ‘invisible parameter’ with a total number of characters that equal to the amount of line spaces in a cell plus one. 

The process can be automatized using Excel formulas.  The formula parameters is explained below:
=LEN(C2)
Counts the total number of characters in a cell
=CHAR (10)
The Excel function of the ‘line feed’ (carriage return) symbol
=SUBSTITUTE(C2,CHAR(10),"")
Delete all the ‘line feed’ symbols in a cell (substitute them by ‘nothing’)
=LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,CHAR(10),""))
Count the total number of ‘line feed’ symbols in a cell

The final formula to create a value that equal the amount of line spaces plus one is as follows:

=POWER(10,LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,CHAR(10),"")))*10

-If the number of line spaces in a cell is 2 = 100
- If the number of line spaces in a cell is 3= 1000
- If the number of line spaces in a cell is 4 = 10000… etc.

The data can then be reimported into Revit, forcing the ‘narrow’ column to wrap and giving you that magical carriage return space.

Watch a video on Carriage Returns on YouTube.





Cesar Escalante, AIA, LEED AP, CCCA
AEC Solutions Application Specialist

Cesar has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Central America in El Salvador, a Master of Architecture from the University of Texas, and is a CCCA (Certified Construction Contract Administrator). His experience includes roles as Project Manager and Project Captain at architecture firms in Oakland, California. As a member of the Ideate Tech Expert team, Cesar teaches Revit Architecture Fundamentals and provides client support and consulting. Cesar’s interest in the built environment includes his work as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.

Get it. Know it. Use it.





January 6, 2015

Sifting Through Unreferenced View Tags in Revit - Part 1

If there is anything that I am guilty of in Revit, it is the overuse of temporary, or what Revit calls unreferenced, views in my model. When I create model geometry, I need to get a quick look it at from a variety of vantage points. The problem is, I tend to forget to delete the unreferenced views after I create and use them. As the model progresses, I find that my model is littered with views, which can lead to confusion between model geometry and unreferenced views. The best practice, of course, is to delete all unreferenced views. Not only does it make searching through your model a lot easier, it will also keep your file size down and your model streamlined. It is probably safe to say that no one likes sifting through hundreds of unreferenced views the Project Browser until they find the view that they are looking for. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we can easily see the unreferenced views in our model and then make an informed decision on what to do with them? With the following instructions, we will show you how you can take all of the unreferenced views in your model and color them so that they graphically pop out, allowing you to quickly decide on whether you want to keep or delete the view.

Stay tuned for the second part of this blog post, which will demonstrate other ways to deal with temporary views in your Revit model.
Most often, unreferenced views are placed so that certain portions of the model can be viewed during design and production. The problem is we tend to leave them in our model and the tags start to blend in with adjacent geometry.
One of the ways in which you can sort for views that are not on sheets is to organize the project browser by the "Not On Sheets" option. Once toggled, the Revit Project Browser will only display views that are not on sheets. From there, you can identify the views that you want to keep and those that you want to discard.
If you are interested in changing the graphical display for the unreferenced view tags, then we can use Revit Filters for this task. The first step is to define a new filter by Defining Criteria. In this example, we are going to call this filter Unreferenced Views and select the "Define Criteria" radio button.
Once you have created the filter, you are ready to define the criteria. For this particular example, I went ahead and picked "Callouts" and "Sections". You can certainly add other categories if you wish. Once you select the categories, then you need to define the Filter Rules. In this example, I want to filter by a Sheet Number that does not contain anything.
Now that you have defined the filter criteria, you need to apply that filter to the views that you wish to alter the appearance of the tags in. In this example, I added the "Unreferenced Views filter" to my 01 – Entry Level plan and decided to override the color of the unreferenced view tags with a red color and a #4 line weight.
Here are the results of the filter and graphical override once applied to the view. If you intend on applying this filter and override to many views, it may be a good idea to include it in your view templates.

Sash Kazeminejad, ACI, LEED AP
AEC Senior Application Specialist
Sash brings proficiency in Autodesk solutions including AutoCAD and Revit Architecture to Ideate customers. His industry experience includes project management, BIM Management, and design for Architectural firms in California, Montana and Oregon. He is LEED accredited professional and is on track to achieve California licensure with Oregon to follow. In his academic life, Sash was awarded a variety of college scholarships, earned a BA in Environmental Design, a MA in Architecture from Montana State University (MSU) and taught Building Information Modeling courses at MSU Gallatin College. As a Revit Architecture Autodesk Certified Instructor, Sash provides Revit Architecture training and support for AEC firms. @sashpdx

Get it. Know it. Use it.