The Building Coder

Revit Add-in File Load Exception

Back from my vacation in Andalusia, and now moving full speed ahead towards Autodesk University, my lecture and hands-on lab on the Revit extensible storage API and all the other exciting goodies there. Meanwhile, here is one little issue that immediately arose with the Revit String Search utility published last week: Probably the most common problem that people keep running into with add-ins on Windows Vista, both in Revit and other environments, is the need to unblock the zip file.... Read more →

String Search ADN Plugin of the Month

Best regards from Andalusia! Here is just a short note to point out that my first ADN Plugin of the Month has been published on Autodesk Labs: the November ADN Plugin of the Month is the Revit String Search. Look at the developer notes at the end for reasons why you should take a look at this :) Description Search Revit project elements and their parameter values for a given string value. Standard string search options can be specified to... Read more →

Retrieving Detailed Wall Layer Geometry

We start off this week with a bang. I find the following topic especially exciting, for several reasons: It deals with geometry. I like that. It implements something that cannot be achieved out of the box. I like that. It makes use of the Revit 2012 parts functionality and the PartUtils class, which we never looked at in detail before. I like that. It uses a temporary transaction to make changes to the model to create and extract information that... Read more →

Retrieving Duct and Pipe Endpoints

Here is a very basic question that may still stump a newcomer to the Revit MEP API: Question: I have just started to learn the MEP API and I am struggling with a problem, which I thought would be fairly easy, but after a day and a half I guess not. I need to iterate through ducts (done that bit), then decide if it's a round duct (done that too). Then I want to get the plan view coordinates in... Read more →

Families Guide

A long time ago, in the far distant past, before the advent of the Family API, Revit API developers and family content creators were two entirely separate camps with their own secret arts and magic charms. Since then, we have been given programmatic access to the family creation functionality, and the synergy in the union of these two camps is growing. This makes it all the more important for any developer to have an in-depth understanding of the family creation... Read more →

Set New Pipe Type Properties

Here is an interesting Revit MEP API question on setting the preferred elbow, tee and junction type information after creating a new Revit MEP pipe type, answered by my colleague Joe Ye in Beijing: Question: I am creating a new Revit MEP pipe type by filtering for all element types of the category OST_PipeCurves and selecting the one named "Standard". On the resulting new ElementType instance, I would like to define the preferred settings as follows: Change the preferred elbow... Read more →

Product and Add-In Wizard Updates

Here are several interesting updates and other little news items that appeared recently. Revit 2012 update release 2 Visual Studio Revit add-in wizard update Removing an Add-In Registered by the Wizard Global Leadership Summit at the One Team Conference Revit 2012 Update Release 2 A few days ago, I was very surprised to hear that some people neglect to update their Revit products when intermediate updates appear. I find that incomprehensible. I updated all three flavours myself yesterday with zero... Read more →

Getting Started with the Revit 2012 API

We already published 'Getting Started with the Revit API' guides for Revit 2009 and 2010. Here is a completely revamped and much expanded version for Revit 2012. Actually, before even reading any further on this page, go to the Revit Developer Center and see what material is available there. That is always the most up-to-date place to look. Still, this overview may help your orientation as well: Getting Started with the Revit 2012 API 1. Setting up the Environment The... Read more →

Reloading a Family Again

We recently listed a whole set of questions that might arise when reloading a family. Here is some additional clarification by Saikat Bhattacharya on this topic that may still not be obvious: Question: I implemented an external command that loads a family and all its symbols. The first time I run it in a new project the family is loaded correctly. When I rerun it a second time to reload the family, the command returns a null reference for it.... Read more →

Using the WriteTransmissionData Method

I presented a sample to using the TransmissionData class to list linked files, and Mike Caruso submitted a comment asking how to use it to set a new path on a RVT file. Furthermore, Guming recently asked how to make use of the ExternalFileReference class. Here is a sample answering both of these questions: Question: Can you demonstrate how I would load, unload and make changes to the path of linked Revit files? Answer: Loading, unloading and editing path to... Read more →