A great reason to use Ideate BIMLink for Autodesk Revit is that it allows non-Revit users to contribute to the data side of the model. What do we mean by this? We mean that interior designs or consultants who don’t have Revit can fill out important space and room information such as a finish schedule or the Specified Airflow values using plain ‘ole MS Excel. We mean that the project manager who is busy traveling to job sites can edit the sheet list information from the job trailer without having to access the project’s .RVT file. Or, maybe it’s the building engineer, onsite, who is reading barcodes from each installed piece of mechanical equipment and wants that data stored back into the as-built model. Ideate BIMLink is the perfect solution for all these scenarios.
How does it work? We’ll use the example of filling out the manufacture and model number for the mechanical equipment or specialty equipment. Bob is the engineer who owns Revit and uses a workstation, while Sue is the general contractor completing the as-built information. Sue is onsite with an iPad walking through the building to confirm each piece of data. Here’s the basic procedure:
- Bob exports the list of mechanical equipment from the Revit model using Ideate BIMLink.
- Bob saves the .XLSX file into Dropbox.
- Sue uses CloudOn with Dropbox on her iPad and sees the file Bob just posted.
- Sue opens the .XLSX and walks around to verify the Manufacture and model number for each piece of equipment that’s actually installed.
- Some of the model number fields are missing or incorrect. Sue edits them on the iPad.
- When Sue is done Bob uses Ideate BIMLink to import the edited .XLSX data and push it back into Revit.
- Now the Revit file data matches the as-built information and the owner gets a high-quality deliverable!
Give it a try; you can download a free Trial version of Ideate BIMLink and both Dropbox and CloudOn are free Apps for the iPad and iPhone. Note that CloudOn also works with Google Drive and with SkyDrive accounts.
For more information on the software solutions, training, and consulting Ideate provides, please visit the Ideate, Inc. homepage.
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 at Ideate Software, and she 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 ECLC of New Jersey and Grow it Green Morristown. Follow Glynnis on Twitter.