The Building Coder

Display Strings and Enumerations

Question: I need to get the string value displayed in the Revit user interface for some parameters whose values only contain an integer value, such as: Wall Function: the API returns an integer value, whereas the UI displays "Exterior". Wrapping at Inserts: again, the API returns an integer value, whereas the UI displays "Both". Is there a general way to get a mapping between the integer values and the display strings for all such items in Revit? Answer: For a... Read more →

Document Elements

We have already used the Document.Elements property a couple of hundred times in previous posts to this blog, so this explanation is rather belated, but addresses a question that does keep on popping up from time to time anyway: Question: How can I access the Document.Elements property in C#? The Revit help document lists the property named Document.Elements, stating that it is an overloaded property providing access to a set of elements from the document. The overloads are listed as... Read more →

Revit Install Location

Quite a while back, we discussed the Revit install path and product GUIDs. Last week, Jim Bish of Inlet Technology wrote me a nice message making use of that and including VB code demonstrating how to use the install path and also how to determine the product GUID from the registry without having to manually type it in or copy and paste it from a table. Jim says: It has always been my policy to give back to others as... Read more →

Getting Started with the Revit 2010 API

I am back again from a great vacation in Italy which I mostly spent outdoors camping, swimming, cooking, and drinking cappuchino. Yesterday was the Jeûne Fédéral holiday (French) in Neuchâtel. I used that to make a first pass through my overfull email inbox. Meanwhile, here is a quick summary and overview of the material we have put together so far for getting started with the Revit 2010 API. Question: Do you have any updated information similar to the getting started... Read more →

Adding a Category to a Parameter Binding

Here is another interesting question raised and answered by Henrik Bengtsson of Lindab. It is another example of how you sometimes need to dig in rather deeply into Revit to update certain internal information stored in the Revit application or document object, a little bit similar to but also a bit more complex than the discussion on how to modify the application options library paths. Before getting into Henrik's issue, here is some background information on the classes involved in... Read more →

Door Marks

Here is a question from Håvard Dagsvik of Cad Quality as on door marks. It can obviously be generalised to other model marks in the BIM as well. Question: One of the best documentation features of Revit is the function assigning numeric values to the Mark parameters. If you insert 5 doors they are marked 1-5. Now if door 3 and 5 are deleted, then a new door will still start its mark on 6. Even if the project is... Read more →

The Revit MEP API

By the time you read this, I will be away happily on a one-week vacation in Italy. I hope you and the blog manage yourselves and behave well until I return. I scheduled some items to be published in my absence, though. In previous posts, we already had a look at the new MEP-specific API features in Revit 2010 and the classes involved in defining and representing MEP connectors in particular. On August 27th 2009, we held the first webcast... Read more →

Room Boundary Location

We already had a look at enabling the room volume computation in C#. Here is a closely related question that also prompted me to implement something similar in VB for a change. Question: Could you please provide some VB.NET code showing how to set the Autodesk.Revit.Rooms.BoundaryLocationType in the document, for instance to 'WallCenter'? Answer: The boundary location type is applied when calculating the room volume. These settings are defined by the document settings volume calculation options. The post mentioned above... Read more →

Duplicate Family Solids

Here is a question handled by Joe Ye on multiple occurrences of solids in a pipe family definition. Question: We were surprised to discover that the solids inside a pipe family are duplicated. This is an issue for us, because we want to determine the relationship between the family symbol and the corresponding geometrical solid. We would like to add symbol properties such as a subcategory to the solid. During the export, we don't know which sub category is used... Read more →

Remove all Geometry from a Family

Here is a question from Joel Karr of Environmental Systems Design, Inc that nicely complements the issue of identifying model elements in a project file with the subsequent correction added. Question: Is it possible to delete all geometry from a Revit RFA family file? I would like to keep all parameters but delete all geometry. Answer: To achieve what you desire, we first need to identify all elements contributing geometry to the model, similarly to the model element selection issues... Read more →

Elevation and Section Views

Here are some questions handled by Joe Ye, on creation of and line work in elevation views and the cut plane definition of a section view. Question: There are different specialised kinds of views derived from the Autodesk.Revit.Elements.View class, and I see several methods in the Revit API to create some of these, such as 3D, Plan, Section, Sheet and Drafting. However, I cannot find a method to create an Elevation View. How can I do that? Answer: Unfortunately, the... Read more →

Detail Lines

We previously discussed various aspects of model lines, such as model line creation, the model line sketch plane, and the minimal length of a model line. Here is a question on the related topic of detail lines handled by my colleague Saikat Bhattacharya: Question: How can I create a detail line on a drafting view? I tried to use the following statement: doc.Create.NewDetailCurve( View, curve, y ); It is unclear to me what the "curve" and the "sketchPlane" stand for... Read more →