The Building Coder

Modifying Cable Tray Shape

Question: I am able to successfully duplicate cable tray family types via the Revit API. I would like to use that feature to duplicate an existing cable tray family type and then change the shape of a given cable tray to the new type. So far, I have not been able to find any API methods to achieve this. Is it possible? If so, how, please? Answer: There is nothing special at all about changing the cable tray type from... Read more →

Updated SDK for Revit 2012 Update Release 1

The Revit 2012 Update Release 1 or UR1 is now available, and the SDK has been updated as well. Here are the main SDK update features: Revit API documentation updates. Minor yet important REX API documentation updates in the getting started guides. A test model which was missing from the CompoundStructure SDK sample, mentioned in its readme file. Updates to the AnalysisVisualizationFramework, AddinUtilitySample, ExternalCommandRegistration, and Ribbon samples. Here are the steps I undertook to install the new version of the... Read more →

Get Transformed Family Instance Geometry

One of the new methods added to the Revit 2012 API is the GeometryElement GetTransformed method, which returns a transformed copy of the geometry in this element, and can also be used to obtain the geometry of a family instance in its model space coordinates. This led to the following interesting question by Olli Kattelus of Progman Oy: Question: First of all a salute for new features of Revit 2012 API and the improved handling of geometry. The API now... Read more →

Extensible Storage Features

Here is a nice hot topic to start off the week. We already talked about the new Revit 2012 API EStorage or extensible storage functionality and presented example code to store a map or dictionary in it. Here are a few other interesting notes and issues related to this which have cropped up, contributed and pointed out by Steven Mycynek: Intended use of EStorage. Handling large amounts of data in EStorage. EStorage is self-documenting. EStorage is object-oriented in two ways.... Read more →

No Multithreading in Revit

I repeatedly hear from developers asking whether multithreading can be used in conjunction with the Revit API. The short answer is no. To our surprise, we just noticed that the Truss SDK sample does demonstrate a use of multithreading. That is an oversight and you should not rely on this working properly. Here is the considered statement of Scott Conover, Software Development Manager of the Revit API, on the current state of multithreading and Revit: "Revit's internals make use of... Read more →

The Revit Structure 2012 API

Sangsen recently submitted a couple of comments which made it clear that a short overview of the new features of the Revit Structure 2012 API is overdue (see below for the Q & A). Here is a description written by Joe Ye for our Spring 2011 ADN AEC newsletter: Autodesk Revit Structure 2012 API Migration Tips This article discusses changes made to the Revit Structure 2012 API. We will quickly go over the list of items which have been changed,... Read more →

Extensions for Revit 2012

I recently mentioned the availability of the subscription packs for Revit 2012. Yesterday, another important set of subscription packs were released: the Revit Extensions: Revit Extensions for Revit Architecture 2012 Revit Extensions for Revit MEP 2012 Revit Extensions for Revit Structure 2012 As always, they are available through the Autodesk subscription center, to which ADN members also have access by going to the ADN home page and selecting the Autodesk Subscription Center link. Once again, even though all of this... Read more →

Boolean Operations and InstanceVoidCutUtils

I mentioned last week that I plan to take a look at Boolean operation in the family creation context. Before we do so, however, here is an overview of some of the Boolean operation functionality provided by the Revit API and the use of one of the approaches in the project context. In the past, the Revit API did not offer many possibilities to perform Boolean operations in the project itself. The standard approach to perform a Boolean operation within... Read more →

Implicit Line Continuation in VB 2010

An new feature that is of interesting to us VB Revit add-in developers is the implicit line continuation that was added in Visual Basic 2010. In prior versions of VB, all statements that continue beyond the end of the line have to be explicitly marked using an underscore '_' character. Since some of the Revit API method signatures force rather long lines, this can become a bit overwhelming. This is what it might look like in VB 2008: '''

... Read more →

Revit STL Exporter Released as Open Source

Here is one of the most surprising and promising recent news items for Revit API developers, published yesterday by Emile Kfouri on BIM Apps: The Revit STL exporter is now open source. Look at Emile's post for the complete story, including: Introduction, motivation, and explanation. Definitions of STL, stereolithography, and open source. STL exporter history. User feedback. Future. Open source license and participating parties. How to get started. Exciting news! Adding a Parameter to a Family To add an unrelated... Read more →

Reloading a Family

Here is an impressively complete list of pretty fundamental beginner's issues that you might potentially run into when reloading a family, starting from scratch, from a recent case handled by my colleague Joe Ye. One of the interesting points that Joe ends up making is that in order to reload a family that has already been loaded into the document, you can use the LoadFamily overload taking an IFamilyLoadOptions argument. Before and after getting to that stage, here are some... Read more →

Creating and Inserting an Extrusion Family

Today is the Pentecost or Whit Monday holiday in Neuchâtel, which gave me some time to explore an interesting and important issue in a bit more depth. Several developers recently asked about creating families programmatically, so here is a first simple example to demonstrate this. It creates a new structural stiffener family as an extrusion of a profile based on a list of XYZ points and inserts an instance of it into the current document. Here are the required steps... Read more →

Placing a Line Based Detail Item Instance

We already talked in depth about placing a detail family instance and the difficulties in selecting the right overload of the NewFamilyInstance method for that, a topic also discussed in the developer guide section 12.3.5 Creating FamilyInstance Objects, and its tables 34 and 35. As we already stated in that post, the exploration continues... Here is an interesting update to the issue by Frode Tørresdal of Norconsult Informasjonssystemer, which also highlights a new overload added in the Revit 2012 API:... Read more →

The Revit MEP 2012 API

The Revit 2012 API includes a number of important MEP specific enhancements, some completely new APIs have been added which are especially useful in the MEP domain, and last but not least, all of the many significant Revit platform enhancements are useful for MEP as well. The major Revit MEP enhancements include: Placeholder ducts and pipes Duct and pipe insulation and lining Read and write access to MEP pipe settings and sizes A number of minor enhancements have also been... Read more →

API Wish List Survey Reminder

This year's API wish list surveys were initially scheduled to close last week: AutoCAD AutoCAD Civil 3D Revit Autodesk Inventor Autodesk Navisworks Autodesk 3ds Studio Max Autodesk Maya Kean just informed us that the deadline was postponed until June 17th, 2011, and July 3rd, 2011 for the last two products, which were added to the list later. Please take the time to fill out the ones of interest to you, if you have not already done so. They really help... Read more →

Subscription Packs

As most Revit users probably know, but some developers may have missed, a whole stack of subscription advantage packs for Revit 2012 have been released and are available through the Autodesk subscription center. ADN members also have access to the subscription center by going to the ADN home page and selecting the Autodesk Subscription Center link there. Even though all of this is "user stuff", some of the tools address workflows you might also be tempted to tackle through programming... Read more →

Set the Visual Style of a View

Today is the day of the Chinese Revit API webcast, and also the holiday of Ascension Day in many part of Europe. Just like last year, it is raining cats and dogs again. Anyway, here is a useful answer to a little question that arises from time to time: Question: I'm creating a new 3D view of a family instance like this: Dim v As View3D = doc.Create.NewView3D( _ famInst.FacingOrientation) v.SectionBox = famInst.BoundingBox(v) Now I would like to set its... Read more →

File Upgrader Plugin of the Month

The third Revit Plugin of the Month has been released, after Adam Nagy's Room Renumbering and Martin Schmid's ASHRAE Viewer: the File Upgrader for Revit by Saikat Bhattacharya. As always, the new ADN Plugin of the Month can be downloaded from the Autodesk Labs ADN Plugins page. The File Upgrader can be used to batch upgrade previous versions of Revit files to the Revit 2012 format. It can upgrade both project files and family content: The download includes a compiled... Read more →