Ideate BIMLinkHow to...
  • Manage Materials

    • Manage Materials

    Material Management is a Revit BIM task that is critical for ensuring rendering, model analytics, quantity takeoff and embodied carbon analytic accuracy. Ideate BIMLink can be used to create and edit materials, compound (wall, floor, ceiling, roof, slab) layers, and when used with Ideate Automation, to schedule the export of weekly material takeoff data. Most of the sample content related to materials can be found in the 09 Material Management folder as shown in the image below.

    Related topics: Merge Materials and Assets with Ideate StyleManager and Batch Import Data From Excel to Revit

    Create New Materials

    Use Ideate BIMLink to create new materials (or parameters, sheets, spaces, types, worksets, etc.) Learn more about element and material creation: Create New Revit Elements with Ideate BIMLink

    Modify Materials and Assign Assets

    Revit material data is cumbersome to manage from the Material Browser. With Ideate BIMLink all materials can be easily modified from Excel, saving time and improving consistency. To modify existing materials, we recommend using the link definition called Project_Stds-Materials which can be used to edit all available properties and includes access to swap the values for Appearance, Thermal, and Physical Assets to any asset already defined with the Revit project or template file. If an asset is assigned to a material but does not exist within the Revit file, an error will indicate this condition, no value will be assigned, but all other properties will be applied.

    The link definition called Materials-Create_NEW can also be used to both modify existing and create new materials as described in this related Help Topic: Create New Materials

    Compound Material Layer Management

    To take control of your quantity takeoff data, material analytics, or rendering output, reviewing the materials assigned to Ceilings, Floors, Roofs, Structural Slabs and Walls should be done through Ideate BIMLink. The sample content found within the 09 Material Management folder that includes the word “Layer” address these unique conditions and are indicated by the Link Type called Compound Layers Type as shown below.

    Use this link type, for example, to find all instances of Finish layers called “sheet rock” and replace them “gypsum board” OR use this same data to edit the width of each layer to ensure accuracy for quantity takeoffs.

    Related Video:

    Material Takeoff Data

    Like Revit, Ideate BIMLink can be used to display and export material takeoff data. This data (e.g. area, volume) is typically not editable via Ideate BIMLink but can be used for review, early estimating, and other takeoff workflows. There are three ways to find the takeoff data within Ideate BIMLink:

    In all cases, the Link Type will be “Material Instance” as shown in yellow below. Note that by default both links will include materials that are used “As Paint”. They can be excluded by adding this property to the Filter tab. To review only ‘painted’ elements, refer to Review Materials with Paint. 

    Review Materials with Paint

    The link definition called QC-Material_Paint can be found within the 07 Quality Control folder. This link definition is a multi-category link that is filtered to only display elements that use the Revit paint tool as a material overrride. 

     

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