This new release brings you a brand new Guardian Messages™ capability right inside of Revit! We’ve heard from our users just how difficult it can be to message all users of a project or even the company. Sure, there are other tools, but managing the lists of users is tedious. We’ve solved this and are excited to share more about it here.
But there’s more! This release represents a ‘rounding-out’ of some existing features, interface and automations. You’ll see a more consistent ‘rules’ experience which greatly expand existing capabilities. It is important to us that we continually improve what we already provide while also adding new capability. That is a big part of Guardian 3.2.
Messages in Guardian are easy to use. Intended as a broadcast system, users and administrators can send a message from the ribbon or from Project Central. The messages will show up in Project Central and as a popup dialog if the user is actively working in Revit.
The feature is designed to help communicate project needs or share broad Revit instructions where it isn’t as natural via other tools. Messages also support Windows Notifications.
When composing a message to a project users can include a screenshot thumbnail which acts as a link to that current view.
At first glance the Custom Interactions list appears little changed. However, entering the settings of several features there will reveal the new rules interface for features like Delete Protection, Copying, Grouping, etc. This allows for much expanded use and creativity - especially because there are so many condition types to choose from. We’re excited to hear how you’re using these new capabilities.
Keep in mind that these settings are technically NEW features. Changes to the settings will not affect previous versions.
The Pin Protection of Guardian has been very popular. We’re expanding its capability with three new settings indicated above. This should increase the effectiveness of already applied protection (ensuring that elements become pinned again) and naturally encourage applying protection to more elements that typically require the protection.
Project Central has been a very popular tool for Project and Company Administrators alike. It has proven a helpful companion towards ensuring a coordinated standard and that best practices are followed on projects. We’re excited to now allow this for your end users. Now users can themselves keep an eye on things like file size over time, user sessions charted out over time, who is currently in the model, areas for improvement in the model, important messages for the project or company, etc. This can be toggled on/off from Company Settings. We have included settings for which parts of this should show up to users. We’re interested if these go far enough?
We are excited about a new UI refresh in a few areas of Guardian! Sometimes it’s the little things.
We have a new way to protect your Project Configurations ensuring only certain individuals are allowed to make changes. We know this is important because of the possible impact of changes to a single configuration affecting many projects and teams. Now only Project Administrators which have been added to the new Administrators tab will be able to make changes to the configuration. Company Administrators can still continue to make changes to any project configuration.
We have added the following property support to Guardian Sync Properties™:
These properties can by uploaded to the cloud, downloaded, synchronized, compared, edited, etc. We look forward to hearing how you are using these.
Check out some of the more notable general improvements we've made to Guardian!
This new release brings you Project Grouping, Sync with Central Traffic Monitor, Guardian Pause for users, advancements to the Loading Families from non-approved sources, and new rule-based protections for Hide Elements in View, Mirror Protection, and Family Override Protection. Project Grouping will allow Revit files to be grouped into Projects which will help admins keep track of Projects and eventually see overall analytics. The Sync with Central Traffic Monitor gives admins the ability to monitor the sync activity of users for each file and set up sync reminders. Updates to many of the current protections have been made to allow for rule-based configurations to automatically protect families from being mirrored, overridden, or hidden in view. The Loading from approved sources has also been updated to allow for the user experience to be customized for many different loading locations and scenarios.
The addition of Project Grouping in Guardian allows administrators to group Revit files into actual Projects. The new structuring will allow firms to more easily keep track of all files within a Project and also see overall Project analytics. Registered Revit models will be able to be grouped into existing Projects or into newly created ones. Once grouped, the models will be shown under the Project in a tree view.
Updates have also been made to the Projects dialog so that additional columns can be displayed using the menu above the grid. Each column can be sorted and filtered individually.
The Project Central and Sync Monitor can now also be accessed through the Projects dialog.
The Sync with Central Traffic Monitor feature allows administrators to prevent sync conflicts and decrease downtime. This is done in two major ways: by allowing admins to keep track of user sync behavior and to create tailored sync reminders. This feature also has protections that can prevent users from trying to sync a file at the same time as another user.
Sync reminders can be customized with messages, incremental reminder intervals, and time out options. These reminders can also be setup to force users to sync after a certain amount of time or can even perform the sync itself if the user is away from their machine.
When users sync, they will see that Revit's sync dialog will be replaced by Guardians new sync dialog.
The sync monitor feature can be used by admins to view all of the active users within a project at the current time. It will also show data around their sync activity (or lack there of).
The Guardian pause feature has been enhanced so that specific areas and features of Guardian can be temporarily suspended. In addition, an option to allow end-users to pause Guardian is also now available.
Within the pause menu, any of the selected features will be suspended when the pause button is enabled.
The additions to this feature can allow things like pop-ups to be disabled while other functions of Guardian are still functional.
When users apply the pause feature, it will automatically resume any suspended features after 1 hour or if the Revit session is ended.
With this release, advancements have been made to the loading families from non-approved sources feature. We have expanded on this to allow for customization of the user experience based on rules for different loading scenarios.
Rules can be created to customize the loading/scanning behavior for specific files or locations. For each of the rules, the scanning/processing experience can be set and admins have the option to apply a protection mode with a custom message. This protection mode and message will be unique to each rule.
A new feature has been added to better apply protection against users hiding elements in view. We have seen that a blanket solution for this isn’t always the best approach so we have added a system of rules so that the protection can be customized based on any specific needs.
The conditions for the rules can either be specific to the elements themselves or the view in which the elements are being hidden.
The Mirror Protection feature has been updated to allow for rules to be created to automatically protect certain elements from being mirrored. Specific families can still be protected by selecting them in the Mirror Protection dialog.
The Family Override Protection feature has been updated to allow for rules to be created to automatically protect certain elements from being overridden. Specific families can still be protected by selecting them in the Family Protection dialog.
You can now identify your standard project parameters with Guardian Sync™! You’ll also be able to keep parameters consistent across projects and access them in files where the parameter doesn’t exist yet.
As with all Guardian Sync™ properties, these maintain their relationships with other Sync™ properties. For example, if you upload a View Filter which uses a project parameter, that parameter will be uploaded as an independent property and these relationships are maintained and visible by scanning for usage. This will be increasingly important as we begin to support even more properties and types with Guardian Sync™
This new release offers a more insightful look into model health with the introduction of Project Central. This release also introduces Project Configurations, which will allow administrators to create sets of settings and protections, previously found in Company Settings, which can be maintained and applied across different projects. Major updates to the project settings and registration rules allow further customization on the user experience for different types of files.
Project Central is a live dashboard within Revit providing real-time activity and health data of each model. It shows recent user activity, Revit warnings, time to sync and file size over time, as well as actionable items that may require the attention of a Project Administrator (such as critical User Commands and Revit Warnings).
There are different section that provide useful information to Project Administrators.
Project Configurations allow for the creation of Project Configuration 'templates' to accommodate Guardian's use on different project types or disciplines. The introduction of Project Configurations adds additional depth to how settings are applied to Projects. Most company Settings have now been moved to Project Configurations and are now controlled within templates. These different configurations of settings can be applied across different projects and still be maintained globally. Project Registration, the company profile settings, Backstage, and administrator settings will still be set in Company Settings along with a few protections that are more tied to general settings such as opening new or central files.
Changes have been made to the Project Registration Rules to allow for further customization in the files that become registered and which settings are applied. Multiple rules can be created for different type of projects and scenarios. For each rule, there are a number of conditions that can be used to meet any needs, these include filename, file location, if it is a cloud model, project units, project information parameters, Revit version, user domain name, username, and user role. These conditions can be combined in AND and OR sets. Within the rules, the default project configuration, mapping configuration, workset set, and applied administrators can be assigned. An option is also included to make the rule register files automatically or to just apply the selected configurations when a file that matches the rule is registered manually.
When registering manually, administrators will be prompted to input the desired Project Configuration, Mapping Configuration, Workset Set, and applied administrators.
The Protected Pins has been modified to allow for more customization on the protection for each pinned element. The default protection mode for pinned elements can be set in the Project Configurations but can also be modified for each element upon pinning. Within the Protected Pins dialog, the protection mode and message can be edited for each element. If a protected element in unpinned by an end-user, then the protection will still be tied to that element. The protection can be reset by either re-pinning the element (by either and end-user or administrator) or by selecting the Pinned checkbox for that element in the Protected Pins dialog.
This new feature will help to prevent end-users from opening/accessing files from non-approved locations. Administrators will be able to create specific rules to specify approved locations. These rules can be used to specify a specific approve location or to prohibit the use of other locations (such as the Desktop or Downloads folder).
Advancements have been made to the Copy/Array Protection so that specific categories can be selected for the protection to be applied. For each selected category, the specified protection mode will be applied when end-users attempt to copy or array those elements.
Line Styles, System Family Types, and View Filters are new additions to the properties that are supported with Guardian Sync. Each of these properties can be uploaded to the cloud to be downloaded by end-users as needed.
There are several new protections and User Commands that are included in this release. Some of these new protections/commands are more general and can be found in Company Settings while the others are located in Project Configurations.
In Custom Interactions, there are the following new protections:
In User Commands, there are the following new monitored commands:
These updates will help to provide a more focused approach on the Guide messages to ensure they are seen by the users that need them the most while not getting in the way of those who don’t. Changes were also made to the UI and some settings to make the workflow around project registration and settings easier. Come see for yourself!
The Command Frequency feature will allow admins and users to set their desired frequency at which the Guide or Prevent dialogs pop up for specified commands. This will be especially helpful for high-frequency commands, such as ‘Hide elements in view’; allowing admins to more gently remind users occasionally, rather than every time.
Allowing the users to choose their own command frequency can greatly improve the end-user experience as they will feel more in control of their own learning progress for certain commands.
The user overrides feature not only gives your users the freedom to specify their desired frequency setting but also allows the admins to overwrite those changes. Administrators can view all user overrides for all commands in the ‘User Overrides’ dialog. Administrators can change these preferences, essentially customizing the approach on a per-user basis based on skill level, etc.
Commands can be set to Prevent which helps to keep certain commands from being utilized. However, when some of those commands are necessary it can be problematic to share the company or project password that can be used to bypass any commands set to Prevent. The One Time Password allows admins to generate a temporary password to allow a user one-time use of a prevented action.
This feature is an additional asset to the ‘Command: Create Group’ protection within ‘User Commands’. This expands on protecting groups by specifying certain elements that are to be prohibited from being placed in groups.
We are eager to begin working with you as you work to improve your processes. Please fill out the form at the following link to learn more about this release:
Our largest release to date brings you many new bold capabilities! Check it out:
The Workset Manager is a BIM manager’s dream! The Workset Manager addresses two distinct limitations of Worksets; Consistent creation & naming of Worksets and the assignment of placed elements onto the correct Worksets.
You can also "Set Active Workset" to prompt users to select the active Workset when projects are opened!
When an element is placed, most users do not populate the necessary instance parameter data. Teams can lose an extensive amount of time having to go back after the fact to populate these instance parameters data. The new Parameter Prompt tool will help you to drastically reduce that time by prompting users to fill in values for pre-specified instance parameters at the moment of placement. This tool can be used to specify project parameters, built-in parameters, and family parameters. This gives a lot of flexibility to make this tool work for you! In addition, the parameters to be prompted can be further customized at the project level.
It’s quite common for Shared Parameters from various sources to show up in your project models, preventing your project schedules from being populated with the correct data. Guardian addresses this issue by now allowing you to map these Shared Parameters to those already in your project. Even when the Shared Parameter is embedded into a formula or has a formula assigned, Guardian will make all the necessary updates to keep the formulas intact.
When users delete individual modeled elements, they are usually unaware of the dependent elements that will also be deleted in the process. In addition, users have been conditioned to ignore Revit warnings altogether. Guardian’s Delete Confirmation will not only show all the dependent elements that will be deleted but will allow users to ‘Show in Project’ these elements before continuing the delete command. This helps to ensure users are fully aware of everything being deleted prior to completing the delete command. Before and after screen shots will be provided via email to the Project Administrator and within Guardian Backstage.
Controlling viewport types is difficult at best. With viewport selection you can now pre-assign your firm’s viewport types to specific view types. When views are placed on sheets, the correct viewport type is automatically applied. The viewport assignment can be further customized at the project level.
You may have curated the perfect content library for your firm, but you cannot prevent your users from going into their own stash and using their favorite families. Using self-created rules, you customize how Guardian handles incoming content from approved and non-approved sources. Guardian will caution, even prevent, users when trying to import content from any non-approved sources. You can even suppress Guardian from processing families all together if users place content from your firm’s approved libraries!
Rich text formatting was added to all message sections for Guardian Guide/Prevent and protection prompts
Added commands:
We are eager to begin working with you as you work to improve your processes. Please fill out the form at the following link to learn more about this release:
It's been less than 3 months since our last release, version 2.4, where we added Family Mapping to your Revit experience. Since then, Guardian has automatically prevented thousands of duplicate families for our customers. We are delighted to continue this tradition of automating the mundane and preventing the risky with this latest release. In version 2.5, you'll find several new features that are completely unique and new to our industry. Check it out below!
Users will often make unwanted modifications to families in projects. Sometimes, this is done by loading families from a library that have changed significantly from what’s already in the project. To overwrite them at a later stage of the project could mean unintended problems. More often, however, users experience project needs for families and attempt to make quick edits.
For any loadable family in your projects, you can now protect them from being overwritten. Users will see a Guardian dialog at the time of loading the families you’ve chosen to protect. This can be an excellent way to understand the nature of changes users are trying to make or prevent changes to your standard. Some might be great additions to the family that should be saved back to the library.
Some families shouldn’t be mirrored! Either they represent actual products that are not available in a mirrored orientation or they shouldn’t be mirrored due to your standard (annotations) or specific functionality (fittings).
In some cases, mirroring a family that shouldn’t can result in extra costs when it comes to construction. Guardian now allows you to select families that shouldn’t be mirrored. When users attempt to mirror a selection that contains a protected family, they will receive an alert cautioning them. You have full control over the appearance of that dialog, as with other commands.
Guardian already allows you to caution users when they create in-place families. Now, you can simply enable this new feature to caution users when they are copying in-place family instances. When these are copied, Revit duplicates the family for each new instance which can quickly cause larger file sizes. When you have enabled the feature, the prompts will appear and you’ll receive extra information about the action.
Guardian already has a very powerful mapping and rules engine that allows you to control your ever-evolving naming conventions. Those rules are applied either at the time non-standard properties enter projects or retroactively by admins in the Project Properties dialog.
This feature adds a logical step to your normal renaming workflows, which typically occur right from within the Revit project browser or the Type Properties dialog. As you rename families, family types and system family types, Guardian will simply ask if you want to remember that as a rule.
Guardian allows administrators to customize different ‘modes’ of experience for 84 different Revit commands. These modes include Monitor, Guide and Prevent. Until now, we’ve been providing insight to each command such as who performed it, in which project, when and what their comment was (if set to Guide or Prevent)
Now, Guardian will be tracking additional information for a variety of different commands, allowing you to drill down into those actions that warrant extra investigation or ‘rolling it back’. This extra information includes elements selected before/after, active view info, etc., for the following commands (and many more)!
We are eager to begin working with you as you work to improve your processes. Please fill out the form at the following link to learn more about this release:
Our version 2.X releases have each addressed a challenging aspect of standardization in Autodesk Revit® and 2.4 is no different.
In another industry first, Guardian now prevents the duplication of families when loaded from other projects! We're excited to bring Family Mapping to your Revit experience, along with many other great features and improvements. Check it out!
You can now use the familiar tools in Guardian to safely remove, rename and map your families. As with other properties, Guardian's powerful rules engine also automates these decisions across your firm for more consistent, leaner projects.
In fact, Guardian can now even prevent the unnecessary duplication of identical families when they are added to your projects AT SCALE.
Any time you need to swap families, you can now use Guardian. The most common cause for this is when Revit duplicates families when they are brought from another project. For example, BreakLine.rfa will become BreakLine1.rfa because Revit thinks they are different. The theories as to Revit's logic in determining 'different' are many, but it continues to be a pain point because the families usually aren't different or they have very minor differences and combining them is very tedious.
Guardian addresses these needs in both an automated way and a manual way. Check it out!
Our customers love having Guardian automate their standards enforcement. We believe that it is healthy to always be improving the naming conventions in your standard and we are here to help make sure that those changes apply when old properties are added to your projects or families. To make this even easier, the Mapping Rules dialog has been an area of focus for us in this release. You'll appreciate a better display of information and ability to search, sort, copy-paste and even merge entire Mapping Configurations.
We are eager to begin working with you as you work to improve your processes. Please fill out the form at the following link to learn more about this release:
Our largest release to date brings you the following:
Add your project admins to Guardian; allowing greater flexibility, controls and notifications on individual projects.
We've added a new project administrator role that allows you to delegate individual projects to your project teams. These administrators handle the project related controls and oversight while company administrators manage the company defaults and identify training opportunities. All administrators can now be managed through the 'Administrators' tab.
We've also added new capabilities that allow you to customize an individual projects settings to allow more flexibility for larger companies. Administrators can be assigned to individual projects through the new settings dialog.
Customize many more commands in your projects, including Hide Elements in View, Project Parameters, etc.
Guardian's ability to guide, in some cases prevent, the use of certain commands has been very popular. This release takes it much further by adding 74 additional commands that can be customized. The interface has been adjusted significantly to accommodate the additional commands.
Line Patterns can now be identified as 'standard' and remain across your projects of any Revit version
In the last version, users got a taste for what Guardian is all about with our support for Fill Patterns! This release brings Line Patterns into the mix - offering a new way to identify your standard line patterns.
Significant effort has gone into our largest UI overhaul to date. Project Properties opens ~5x faster & new columns show more usage and duplicate information.
Many underlying improvements make working with the Project Properties, and Incoming Properties dialogs much more powerful, intuitive and responsive. We've added columns to better compare information about each property type including usage and duplicate counts! These counts will appear dynamically as properties are scanned.
We are eager to begin working with you as you work to improve your processes. Please fill out the form at the following link to learn more about this release:
For those who have followed Guardian since the beginning, there's a real sense that we're building something very unique. We often hear "I can see where you're going with this!". We couldn't be more excited about our vision for the future and this release represents an important part of that vision. We'll take a second to remind you of our major features:
Version 1:
Version 2 already has:
We'd invite you to review what we've added to this newest release and see if you, too, can see where we're going! The time to join us is NOW if you want to be a part of shaping Guardian!
Guardian Sync™ is a new service that allows you to store and access your standard properties in the Cloud. This allows you to TRULY keep those properties synchronized across your projects in a natural way that you control. This release is laying the foundation for the entire system.
Today, you can try out Guardian Sync™ with our first supported property type: Fill Patterns (described below). We look forward to continued feedback.
An example workflow is as follows:
Open your template and upload your Fill Patterns. In the process, Guardian marks those as 'Keep Synchronized'. Projects that are created from the template will also maintain a connection to the cloud source. Guardian will notify administrators if there is a property that no longer matches the Sync property in the cloud.
We're excited to announce that you can now upload ALL of your fill patterns into the Guardian Sync™ service. Typically, maintaining a library of patterns has been challenging for firms as patterns are naturally confined to individual projects. Strategies have varied but it usually involves a time-consuming process of importing pattern .pat files or 'Transfer Project Standards' from another project.
With Guardian, administrators can instantly upload patterns and those are immediately available to your users. Your users will appreciate that they no longer have to open up 'container projects', transfer project standards and hope they didn't bring in dozens of unwanted patterns.
There are some other interesting capabilities included:
One of our most common requests was to allow normal users to register projects. We're now allowing you to choose whether auto-registration applies when users open or create projects. We also took things a step further and gave you the ability to apply rules for auto-registration based on location and filename.
If you do NOT want detached models registered, you can now control that. Similarly, if you only want BIM 360 projects registered, you can control that with the location filter.
We are eager to begin working with you as you work to improve your processes. Please fill out the form at the following link to learn more about this release:
Last August, we announced a set of bold new features as part of our 2.0 release. We added a notification system, ability to clean entire projects, weekly reports, pinning protection, and much more. Now, leading firms are using Guardian as their silent partner; always there, everywhere, to guide users into healthy activity and automate their standards.
We're building upon those features in a big way with this release. Check it out!
Go Backstage and access virtually all data that Guardian stores for your company.
Here are a few examples of how you can use this data:
There are many uses for this data and it is completely YOURS to use. There is no additional cost for this service and we are very excited to learn how our customers use it. Many are excited to implement this data into their training programs.
You may use the data in your own dashboard system, utilize our template or consult with our team to create your own dashboard.
Our users have loved the simple way that Guardian creates and manages their mapping rules. These rules work seamlessly behind-the-scenes, removing properties or converting properties to your standard.
We've added some new abilities to make this even easier and more powerful, especially for larger teams.
You can now view an entire revision history for your rules. This is especially important for larger teams that have many administrators adding and modifying rules.
We've also added the ability to restore a rule back to a previous state, which creates a new revision.
We are eager to begin working with you as you work to improve your processes. Please fill out the form at the following link to learn more about this release:
The team at Guardian has been working hard to bring you this massive update! Today, we are bringing you an even more powerful Revit project assistant! Check out the new features under each of the following themes. Note: this list is not comprehensive - over 350 tasks were completed in this release!
We are eager to begin working with you as you work to improve your processes. Please fill out the form at the following link to learn more about this release:
At iconicBIM, we are committed to making your experience with Guardian absolutely rock-solid. This minor release is mostly a round of bug fixes - particularly to support (on a deeper level) many 3rd party content management systems, such as Avail and UNIFI. However, we couldn't resist adding some new features. Take a look!
Oh, and you should notice Guardian working even a little faster in general. Your experience with Guardian is very important to us and we hope you appreciate the fine-tuning effects we've added here.
We believe that the best software is easy to use but the hardest to create. This release is a perfect example of that. Guardian’s new Suggestions Framework uses behind-the-scenes data to make logical suggestions for certain actions. In your quest for effective and enforced standards at your firm, we invite you to consider the substantial effect these new features will have on your processes!
If you have duplicate properties in your Revit projects, how would you know it? Properties that are the same but have different names can cause confusion with users. Guardian now automatically detects if the following properties are duplicates:
This is all especially compelling because once a duplicate is identified, Guardian can use (at your direction) its robust ability to merge properties together. It does this by seeking out all places the properties are applied (yes, even inside of family structures, regions, etc.) and changing out the values before removing unnecessary duplicates. This powerful ability is manifest through the new Suggestions Framework and proactive prompts to your users.
Users of Guardian are already thrilled with the ability to see all incoming property types and map those together with existing properties(automatically remember those actions too!). We also know that the content we bring into our projects can bring MANY properties with them. To help you make effective decisions, we’ve added Suggestions to the incoming properties dialog box:
Guardian will then present a series of dialogs to step through, each one providing valuable insight into the ‘DNA’ of the properties.
Besides properties being duplicates of each other, you will see other forms of suggestions appear here also. We think you’ll REALLY appreciate the additional insight this provides. We’ll be developing more suggestions as we go.
Company admins will now see the following setting appear in Settings:
When turned on, Guardian will then provide prompts when new properties are created that are duplicates. Here’s an example of what they’ll see:
This feature is not just for NEW properties, but also modifications to existing ones as well.
There are many subtle improvements we made to Guardian. This is an important release in terms of stability, performance and infrastructure. These improvements include:
We hope you like this release! It’s sure to be a very exciting year for Guardian. We invite you to jump aboard this thrilling journey with us!
Just three weeks ago (v1.2), we introduced new features that connect your projects together using cloud-driven rules. Now, we invite you to consider what the following new features can add to your firm's workflows. Check it out!
You can now control what activities are monitored, such as 'Loading Family', Copy-Pasting and even actions from other 3rd party add-ins.
For each activity, you can choose between 2 new user experiences:
Some users unknowingly wreak havoc. You can now choose to restrict (with Admin password override) or provide a custom message when users:
Here's an example of what they'll see:
We tighten some nuts-and-bolts with every release. In 1.3.0 you'll notice improved performance when loading content into projects and opening various dialogs, thanks to our new caching system for the cloud stored data. We also added to the processing logic used when encountering properties. Enjoy!
Guardian is on the MOVE with this large release! Guardian is your solution for maintaining clean, consistent projects. This is done through cloud based rules, automatically enforced, that span Revit versions. Fill out the form on the Guardian page if you would like a demo.
Guardian is now your solution to enforce standards and rules across all of your projects. In this release, we've changed the way projects were assigned rule sets - and made it much more transparent. We think you'll enjoy having a place inside Revit where you can see all of your current projects AND enforce your standard on them however you see fit!
Specific features include:
This version makes the management of stored rules a breeze! Not only is the interface much more transparent, but actions can be performed in batch also. Here's what the new interface allows:
You can now control the following from a company level: (More settings will be added here shortly)
Reach out to learn more, ask any questions, or meet the team! We'd love to learn more about your challenges and explore the more proactive solution.
