by Steve Deadman, Customer Success Manager — UK/EMEA, Ideate Software
Steve has built a proven track record of BIM implementations at award-winning architectural practices, including several on The Architect’s Journal’s Top 20 list.
Prior to Ideate Software, Steve was the Head of BIM for nearly five years, and his many accomplishments included successfully leading the company in gaining a BIM Level 2 accreditation from Lloyd Register, working with leadership to develop strategic plans to implement and improve BIM workflow, and maintaining standards to assure compliance at annual BIM level 2 accreditation surveillance visits.
Find Steve on LinkedIn.
Ever Dream of Cloning Yourself?
What would your replica take off your plate?
Pretend you have a clone that can do any work tasks you want. I expect that you will keep all the design and problem-solving work for yourself and pass off the boring tasks. Throughout my career, I’ve never met a single person in the architecture, engineering, construction, or building operations fields that is energized by the tedious tasks required to do their jobs well. In fact, as a professional who specialized in the management of BIM processes and technology for several top architectural firms in the United Kingdom, one of my jobs was to find tools that would take those tasks off my teams’ plates.
More than 12 years ago, I started working with Ideate Software, which develops software that streamlines repetitive Autodesk® Revit® tasks. I was so impressed with their products and support that I joined the company in 2021. Since that time, their Revit add-ins have continued to gain popularity around the world, but it’s their new scripting tool for Revit called Ideate Automation that is creating a huge buzz.
With Ideate Automation, you can schedule a script to pick a file, perform a task, and create an output file at a time convenient for you. It runs with minimal effort, and it delivers accurate and consistent results. That means that tasks that used to take a lot of your time can be completed overnight, while you are taking a break, or before a meeting or call, and the data you need can be available when you need it. Now that is something that your clone would do for you!
Here is what Ideate Automation can do as a stand-alone product:
- Open Large Revit Files – No more waiting, waiting, waiting.
Ideate Automation offers scheduled or on-demand file opening. It also eliminates the need to remember Revit versions and file locations, and it allows pre-definition of closed worksets. - Export Data to PDF, DWG, NWC, and IFC Files – Get the data in the format you need without manually opening the Revit project.
Use Ideate Automation to schedule exports to run during off hours. No advanced file setup is needed. Just point to your Revit model and add the Revit view/sheet set to the script.
- Publish to Autodesk BIM 360® or Autodesk Construction Cloud® – Eliminate the Revit restrictions that limit scheduling publishes to design collaboration owners, admins, 1x per week, and the entire folder. Plus, there is no option to exclude links.
With Ideate Automation, there is just one location for setup, anyone with access to the model can publish when they want, and it includes the option to publish without links.
- Upgrade and Maintain Family Files – Reduce time spent on labor-intensive family file maintenance activities.
Batch-process Revit files with Ideate Automation when upgrading, auditing, or compacting RFA files to a specified version of Revit; deleting all backup RFA files; and performing detailed family file health reporting.
- Maintain Revit Files and Models – Enhance team productivity by maintaining Revit model health.
Use Ideate Automation to audit and compact Revit files, perform comprehensive and consistent model metrics, and use our supplemental Power BI template.
Ideate Automation can also be used with Ideate Software products for:
- Dynamic PDF/DWG/NWC exports
- Document issue records
- Style usage reports
- Quantity takeoffs
- COBie data prep
- Model health checks
- Annotation clash reports
- Warning reports
Summary
While it’s nice to dream about having a clone to do all your busy work, the reality is that you can get the same results with software developed by Ideate Software. Visit www.ideatesoftware.com to learn more.
Autodesk, Autodesk Revit, Autodesk BIM 360, and Autodesk Construction Cloud are trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries.
