The Building Coder

Updated SDK, 2012 Products, and Source Code Colourisation

Here are several miscellaneous news items that I would like to pass on before heading off for a week's vacation: Updated Revit SDK AUGI Autodesk 2012 product overviews HTML source code colourisation Easter greetings Updated Revit SDK on Developer Center An updated version of the Revit SDK has been posted on the Revit Developer Center. The differences to the version included with the initial public release of the Revit 2012 product are negligible. Still, you can always rely on finding... Read more →

Migrating the Building Coder Samples to Revit 2012

This is the third migration of the The Building Coder samples, after moving from Revit 2009 to Revit 2010 and then to Revit 2011. The move from 2010 to 2011 was a tougher round with many changes. This time around, from 2011 to 2012, it is quite easy and straightforward again. For details on what needs modifying, as always, please refer to the Revit 2012 SDK documentation and especially the chapter 'What's New' in the Revit 2012 API help file... Read more →

Revit 2012 WikiHelp Overview

Here is a product related news item, although obviously of interest to developers as well. Revit product help has been available on the web for a while now, which provides a number of benefits. Some online Revit API help is also available, although the full Revit SDK documentation is not there yet. Now the product help system has taken the next step by moving to a wiki-based system which provides support for a full community learning experience. Here is a... Read more →

DevDays 2010 Online with Revit 2012 API News

Back in December, I mentioned some of the stations of our yearly world-wide Developer Days or DevDays conference tour. Now the recordings of the final updated contents of these presentations are available to the general public. They can be obtained from the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) DevTech API Training & Consulting page, following the link to the webcast archives. To find the recording of the new features of the Revit 2012 API, created by my colleague Saikat Bhattacharya, please filter... Read more →

Product GUIDs for Revit 2012 and Forever More

Every year anew, people ask for the Revit product GUIDs used to identify the Revit installation and stored in the Windows registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall There are different keys for each of the three Revit flavours, and for both 32 and 64 bit operating systems. The first time around, we discussed the Revit 2010 and previous versions' installation path and product GUIDs, and then updated the list for Revit 2011 last year. As I mentioned last time, the install path is... Read more →

The REX SDK

Last night I returned to the vegetarian restaurant that I remembered from my last visit to Verona. If used to be called Suca Baruca, or crazy pumpkin. Now it changed its style a bit, and its name, to La Fata Zucchina, ristorante biovegetariano; highly recommended! I recently mentioned the main new features of the Revit 2012 API and pointed out that many wishes have been resolved and new features such as extensible storage added. Besides the addition of some new... Read more →

Visual Studio Add-In Wizards for Revit 2012

As I mentioned yesterday, this weekend was spent traveling to Verona to give a Revit API training here. Happily, I enjoyed some mountain air the weekend before, on Helgenhorn 2837m, Basodino 3273m and Cima di Lago south of All'Acqua in the Bedretto Valley (more photos by Jogi): Anyway, that was last weekend; back to here and now in Verona, where I was busy yesterday, preparing for the training, starting today. I already updated the DevTV Visual Studio wizards for creating... Read more →

Performant Hardware

I spent all day yesterday in trains, which was unfortunate, since it was the most beautiful Sunday, and springtime is in full bloom. It also forced upon me some unfortunate comparisons of the Swiss and Italian train systems. Needless to say, I arrived later than expected. Still, I ended up happily back in Verona, Italy, where I started seriously learning Italian two years ago, for a repeat visit to provide a Revit API training class to Steel & Graphics srl.... Read more →

Extensible Storage

I mentioned the main new features of the Revit 2012 API and also pointed out that many important developer wishes have been resolved. Here is another very fundamental and longstanding wish that has been addressed, more completely than anyone might have expected: Question: How can I store my custom application data inside the Revit file using the Revit API? Answer: One possibility is to use a shared parameter. This is a slightly convoluted operation and involves setting up the shared... Read more →

Ritchie's Revit API Introduction

We have already seen a couple of interesting contributions by Ritchie Jackson of the Adaptive Architecture and Computation programme at UCL, the University College London: Blends, Hermite splines and derivatives Complexity versus constructability The Autodesk Project Vasari API Flattening a non planar extrusion profile Here is another topic, an introduction to the Revit API for programming novices for the London Revit User Group LRUG. Knowing Ritchie, it includes a couple of novel aspects: Focus on VSTA macros. Comparison of manual... Read more →

Nested Lighting Fixture Instances

We already looked at a couple of aspects of nested family instances, such as access to nested instance geometry, creating nested families and determining whether a family instance is nested. Now Joel Spahn of Lighting Analysts, Inc. submitted a comment on the nested family utility methods raising a new question related to nested lighting fixtures, efficiently resolved by Harry Mattison of the Revit development team: Question: I have adapted this code to extract nested family instances and it works beautifully.... Read more →

Use of NewTakeOffFitting on a Pipe

I presented an example of using the NewTakeOffFitting method on a duct a while back. The original question, however, was actually related to inserting a break into a pipe. That turned out to be a bit more tricky. This was also discovered by Kailash Kute, who posted a whole series of comments on the topic. I will herewith reiterate my first answer to him and post the code that I had working to see whether that will help us move... Read more →