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Remaining on the track of geometrical topics, for the time being... A common inquiry is how to determine the roof part of the boundary of a given room or space. Currently, Revit does not expose such an API, and there is no straightforward way to obtain this information. However, the new Revit SDK sample RoomsRoofs is provided to answer this question. It demonstrates how to check whether a room or space has a bounding roof, and determines all roof elements... Read more →
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After the diversion exploring the geometry related information and samples provided with the basic Revit SDK, let us finally get into an example of some own geometry related code. We present an algorithm to dimension an arbitrary Revit element containing a solid in its geometry. The implementation is tailored to handle wall elements, but the functionality can be applied to any other element containing geometry as well. The idea is pretty simple, and possibly not awfully useful for real life,... Read more →
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The previous post provided an overview of the Revit geometry library and very briefly mentioned some geometry viewers provided in the Revit SDK samples. We will discuss these a little bit more before moving on to some own example code dealing with geometry. The Revit SDK currently includes the following viewers: AnalyticalViewer ElementViewer RoomViewer RevitViewer ObjectViewer All the viewers query a selected Revit element for some specific geometry, traverse it, break it down into simple line segments, and render those... Read more →
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In a comment on What Next, Rod Howarth suggested looking a bit at functionality that involves using geometry, location points and other modelling based stuff. I think this is a brilliant idea; it fits in well with the introductory material that we have discussed so far, and constitutes a logical and interesting next step in exploring the Revit API. Before diving into any own example code dealing with geometry, let us look a bit first at the Revit geometry library... Read more →
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In the previous post, we noted that the area parameter for a wall had a numerical value of 283.65 on one hand, but a string representation of '26.352 m²' on the other. The reason for these two different values is that Revit internally works with a fixed set of database units for different measurement types. These internal database units cannot be changed. All raw database values obtained from attributes will always be returned and expected in database units. Some of... Read more →
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Now that we have covered the basics, let us get into some small examples of day to day issues that arise. I recently gave a Revit API introductory workshop. The first little sample add-in we wrote together as a first step to exploring API access to the Revit BIM selects all wall elements in the database and lists the area and length of each. This provides an opportunity to discuss a number of interesting details, such as some of the... Read more →
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Now that we have got the getting started material out of the way, let us embark on the great adventure of free unstructured day to day blogging. If you think there is anything still missing for the getting started material, please let me know. Also, please let me know if you have any comments on the material I post or wishes and ideas for other subjects that I have not yet touched. I can obviously make no guarantees about anything,... Read more →
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I often hear the question how to unload a Revit add-in. Unfortunately, this is not possible, due to the fundamental .NET framework mechanisms used to load and manage the plug-ins. Revit manages one AppDomain which is used to load all add-in classes. It would theoretically be possible to unload the entire AppDomain to remove the loaded add-ins. I once tried to implement a system to unload a Revit plug-in by implementing a cascaded pair of IExternalCommand classes. In the first... Read more →
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The previous post discussed the use of the unified solution file SDKSamples2009.sln to manage, compile and search the entire collection of over hundred sample applications provided in the Revit SDK. In order to actually execute a sample for testing and debugging, it also needs to be loaded into Revit. The most direct way to achieve this is to edit Revit.ini to add an entry to the Revit Tools > External Tools menu. Another possibility is to use the Add-In Manager... Read more →
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As mentioned in the previous post, the Revit SDK samples include a powerful tool to help manage the over hundred individual samples provided. On one hand, we wish to compile all the samples easily in order to load and execute them inside of Revit for testing and debugging purposes. We also want a comfortable method to search for solutions to specific tasks. The unified solution file SDKSamples2009.sln addresses both these needs. In order to compile the samples, every project included... Read more →
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