I mentioned some basics of elevation and section view creation a long time ago, but omitted to publicise the results of the ensuing discussion with Konstanty and similar ones with Jenney and Bhavana. The issue came up in some ADN cases as well, so it really is time to get a bit more information on this out there to you.
Question: I see that the CreateViewSection SDK creates a detail view of a wall seen from one side. How can I create similar top and front views of it?
Answer: First of all, as always, of course, take a look at the developer guide, e.g. section 18.1.4 Creating and Deleting Views. It explains the different view types and how they are defined and created programmatically.
The main aspect in defining the section view direction is setting up the BoundingBoxXYZ appropriately. As you say, this is demonstrated by the CreateViewSection SDK sample. It sets up the bounding box used in the call to the NewViewSection method in a helper method GenerateBoundingBoxXYZ. The latter creates a new BoundingBoxXYZ and sets its Min and Max properties. The most important thing is its Transform property, which defines the origin and directions (RightDirection, UpDirection and ViewDirection) of the created view. That is defined by the GenerateTransform helper method, which branches off into different flavours depending on the selected element type, wall, beam or floor. In the case of a wall, it uses the wall location line to determine its midpoint and direction.
Here is some simpler code that does the same thing without branching out into any helper functions, uses the element bounding box to determine the view origin, and a hard-wired view direction to set up a front view:
Dim uiapp As UIApplication = commandData.Application Dim uidoc As UIDocument = uiapp.ActiveUIDocument Dim app As Application = uiapp.Application Dim doc As Document = uidoc.Document Dim sel As Selection = uidoc.Selection Dim e As Element = sel.Elements(0) ' get the element bounding box; ' 'nothing' means model geometry: Dim ebbox As BoundingBoxXYZ = e.BoundingBox(Nothing) ' determine size of box Dim w As Double = (ebbox.Max.X - ebbox.Min.X) Dim d As Double = (ebbox.Max.Y - ebbox.Min.Y) Dim h As Double = (ebbox.Max.Z - ebbox.Min.Z) ' make it easier to see, e.g., not too narrow If w < 10.0 Then w = 10.0 End If If d < 10.0 Then d = 10.0 End If ' from front Dim maxPt As XYZ = New XYZ(w, h, 0.0) Dim minPt As XYZ = New XYZ(-w, -h, -d) Dim bbox As BoundingBoxXYZ = New BoundingBoxXYZ() bbox.Enabled = True bbox.Max = maxPt bbox.Min = minPt ' set the transform Dim trans As Transform = Transform.Identity ' find the mid point of the element Dim midPt As XYZ = 0.5 * (ebbox.Max + ebbox.Min) ' set it as origin trans.Origin = midPt ' determine view direction trans.BasisX = XYZ.BasisX trans.BasisY = XYZ.BasisZ trans.BasisZ = -XYZ.BasisY bbox.Transform = trans ' create the section view Dim viewSection As ViewSection = doc.Create.NewViewSection(bbox)
To set up a different view, e.g. the right-hand side, you just modify the following lines:
' . . . ' from right Dim maxPt As XYZ = New XYZ(d, h, 0.0) Dim minPt As XYZ = New XYZ(-d, -h, -w) ' . . . ' determine view direction trans.BasisX = XYZ.BasisY trans.BasisY = XYZ.BasisZ trans.BasisZ = XYZ.BasisX
For the sake of completeness and your comfort, here is BackSectionView.zip containing the rough draft of two entire little VB and C# sample projects. The C# version implements three methods GetFrontView, GetBackView and GetTopView, which may or may not fulfil the promise of their names, but at least they will give you a starting point.
Detail View, Not Section View
When using the NewViewSection method, you should be aware of the note at the end of the developer guide section 18.5 ViewSection, which points out that these views will appear as details views in the project browser, unlike section views created manually using section using the command View > New > Section, which show up under the Sections (Building Section) node in the Project Browser.
