See the video for examples or follow the exercise below to learn how to quickly setup a new project via Ideate BIMLink and Excel.
Create Levels
One of the first steps in project setup is to set up our levels to match the size and anticipated height of our building design.
This exercise is designed to work with the Mechanical-Default.rte template file and a pre-configured Excel file, Ideate Software Project Setup-Mechanical.xlsx, both included in the zip file that can be downloaded here.
In Revit, create a new Project using Mechanical-Default.rte as your starting point.
From the Project Browser, select the Elevation view named North - Mech. In this view you can see that the file already has (2) levels setup.
Launch Ideate BIMLink from the Ideate Software tab.
Select the New button.
Browse to the Create Elements folder and then pick the first link, called 00 Levels-Create_NEW. Select Next to review the properties, then Done to create the link.
On the main dialog, select the Import button and browse to sample Excel file that you downloaded with the template file called Ideate Software Project Setup-Mechanical.xlsx.
Choose to import the 00 Levels-Create_NEW worksheet and notice that after selecting OK (4) new levels are now in the project.
Close Ideate BIMLink and adjust the grid lines to match the extents of the project.
Create Plan Views
Once the project levels have been set, it is easy to have Ideate BIMLink generate floor plan, structural plan, ceiling plan and area plan views to match your project-specific view names.
Within Ideate BIMLink, select the New button, then select the Browse method along the left hand side of the New dialog.
Go to the Create Elements folder, as before, and use multi-select to create all three links:
01 Views-Create_NEW_Plans
02 Sheets-Create_NEW
03 Viewports-Create_NEW
On the main dialog, select the 01 Views-Create_NEW_Plans link definition and select the Properties button to edit.
Use the Search feature to find and add the custom Sub-Discipline property. This value is used in this project to organize the view folders within the Project Browser.
Use the “Move Up” button to make this property the third one, just below the “Family and Type” property, then select OK to return to the main dialog.
Next, select the Import button and browse to the same Excel file Ideate Software Project Setup-Mechanical.xlsx, then select the 01 Views-Create_NEW_Plans worksheet for import.
On closing Ideate BIMLink you will notice that (24) new views have been created per the details of the Excel file. Additionally, several edits were made to the (6) existing views as shown in yellow below.
Create Sheets
To create sheets from the same Excel file, follow these steps:
Within Ideate BIMLink, select the Import button again, browse to the same Excel file Ideate Software Project Setup-Mechanical.xlsx, then select the 02 Sheets-Create_NEW worksheet for import.
On closing Ideate BIMLink you will notice that (30) new sheets have been created per the details of the Excel file.
For additional information about creating sheets, see this related topic.
Place Views on Sheets
To complete the project setup tasks we can now use Ideate BIMLink to place the newly created views onto the newly created sheets. Revit does not allow empty views to be placed on a sheet, so before you complete this last step you will need to ensure that all views have a visible element!
Open the floor plan view called Level 1 - Power and see that it is empty.
Place an elevation marker on this view to ensure that all similar views will have at least one visible element before proceeding to the viewport creation process.
Within Ideate BIMLink, select the Import button again, browse to the same Excel file Ideate Software Project Setup-Mechanical.xlsx, then select the 03 Viewports-Create_NEW worksheet for import.
On closing Ideate BIMLink you will notice that each of the (30) new sheets now have one placed plan view (aka viewport).