The Building Coder

Family Instance Placement

One issue that keeps cropping up is how to determine which NewFamilyInstance overload to use to place an instance of a given family. As always, you need to first ensure that the desired workflow can be achieved manually through the user interface. If anything fails in the interactively driven steps, it certainly will not work better when driven programmatically, and the user interface will provide much richer information on possible failure reasons. The first place to look for information on... Read more →

Max' Revision Wrapper Class

Max posted a comment on what's new in the Revit 2014 API presenting a neat little revision parameter wrapper class that I have taken the liberty of adding to The Building Coder sample collection. In Max' own words: For everyone also looking for the Revision parameters: Here a little wrapper class in C#: using System; using Autodesk.Revit.DB; namespace BuildingCoder { ///

/// A Revision parameter wrapper class by Max. ///

class JtRevision { ///

/// The BIM... Read more →

Saving a Solid to a SAT File Implementation

During my recent vacation, I published a description by my colleague Akira Kudo describing how to research the Revit SDK samples to find all the required bits and pieces to solve the task of saving a temporary in-memory Revit solid to an external SAT file. Victor Chekalin, or Виктор Чекалин, reacted to that and provides a complete Visual Studio project to demonstrate the full implementation of that functionality. You can download it as a zip archive or clone the project... Read more →

Back and Preparing for AU and DevDays Conferences

I returned from my nine-day break and am fully invigorated and happily back with the Revit API. Besides handling questions from developers, I also need to deal with the upcoming yearly conference preparations. On one hand, we have Autodesk University, for which registration opened and I need to prepare my three classes. As you know, AU is completely open and public, based on the released Autodesk products, and addresses both end users and developers. The Autodesk Developer Network ADN, supporting... Read more →

10.000.000.000th Post and Element Type Parameters

This is the 1024th post on The Building Coder, just to top off our recent 5-year and 1000th post celebration. The decimal number 1024 equals 2^10, i.e. 10.000.000.000 in binary format, hence the large number of zeroes in the title :-) I am also still away on vacation and this is the second post in my absence – or 10th, in binary format :-) – dealing with retrieving ElementType parameters, the ADN Xtra labs built-in parameter checker and a BipChecker... Read more →

How to Save a Solid to a File

As I announced, I am currently on vacation. Still, I don't want to leave you or The Building Coder completely abandoned for too long, so here is a quick question recently answered by my colleague Akira Kudo: Question: How can I save a solid to a file, please? I searched for an applicable API call, but without success. I am not trying to save a Revit element, or I could use the existing Export methods. My object is an Autodesk.Revit.DB.Solid... Read more →

AppStore Advice and Zooming in a Preview Control

Let's look at another quick PreviewControl question. First, however, please note: Portathon Day 2 Today is the second day of the Portathon! Earn $100 Submitting an Autodesk Exchange App Exchange App Videos Portathon reminder and video Cloud and AppStore usage growth Everything went well yesterday, and today we continue. Last chance to earn your hundred bucks! Advice on Submitting an App to the Exchange Store While we are on the topic of the exchange store and Portathon event, let me... Read more →

MultiReferenceAnnotation Example

Miguel Angel Alanis asked on the Autodesk Revit API discussion forum for an example of making use of the new MultiReferenceAnnotation. I put together this blog post to make sure the solution is easily found. First, a note on something more imminent: Portathon Day 1 Today is the first day of the Portathon! Earn $100 Submitting an Autodesk Exchange App Exchange App Videos Portathon reminder and video Cloud and AppStore usage growth Wish us all luck and much success, please.... Read more →

Registration Open for Autodesk University 2013

Registration is now open for Autodesk University 2013. It is easier this year, because you use your Autodesk account (Autodesk ID). If you don’t have one, you can easily create it during registration. The AU website has been updated to help you find all of the preconference events scheduled for Monday, the classes and hands-on labs that might interest you, and other activities taking place during the conference. All industry specific activities and class highlights are listed on focused pages... Read more →

Rotating a Plan View

Here is a query from the Autodesk Revit API discussion forum dealing with the rotation of a plan view: Question: I am trying to create rotated duplicates of existing views using the Revit 2013 API. I managed to create the view, both as dependent and not. After this I activate the view crop box and make it visible. I then create a rotation transformation. When I debug it, I can see that the transformation and rotation of the bounding box... Read more →

Creating an Offset Wall

Here is an issue we have not looked at in a long time, brought up again by the following query: Question: I am creating a tool to generate a BIM from CAD data. One of the steps involves generating a floor slab, and then placing exterior walls along its edge. The tool begins by using model lines and arcs as a profile to generate the floor. Unfortunately, that generates walls that resting half on and half off the slab: How... Read more →

Determine Location Attributes and Retrieve Key Elements

Here are two issues that we have visited in the past and seem to be worth recapitulating and summarising, on determining the location attributes of an element and retrieving all key elements in a key schedule. Determining the Location Attributes of a Component Element Question: I have extracted data from a Revit model via DBLink. Now I would like to establish a relation between a component element and its location-centric attributes, specifically its Level, Space, and the Room it is... Read more →

Access to Individual Elements in Linked Projects

Access to individual elements in linked projects is a relatively simple matter, but can still cause some confusion, as we can see below. We looked at various aspects of linking files and accessing the linked element data and geometry in the past, e.g. Linked files Hiding linked files List linked elements Access to linked file geometry List linked files and TransmissionData Linked element geometry access Selecting a face in a linked file Arnošt Löbel's AU 2012 class CP3455 on managing... Read more →

Cloud and AppStore Usage Grows – Portathon Reminder

As you know, we are promoting the use of the Autodesk Exchange AppStore and cloud and mobile technologies. We have the Portathon coming up end of next week, and you can earn $100 right away, just by submitting an exchange app before it ends: Earn $100 submitting an Autodesk Exchange App Exchange App tutorial videos Portathon reminder and video announcement Regarding the cloud and mobile side of things, I published my cloud-based 2D Revit model editor (live tech summit recording),... Read more →

Room Neighbours

Let's say hello to our neighbours. This issue was raised and also solved by Erik Eriksson of White Arkitketer AB, who wishes to determine the neighbouring rooms for any given room. It is an extension of the very early discussion of room and wall adjacency from January 2009 that just looks at determining the neighbouring walls for a given room. The Revit API now provides much more powerful tools for this kind of analysis, enabling us to easily go the... Read more →

Set a Suitable View for Family Instance Placement

Matt Taylor of WSP raised an issue related to the use of the PromptForFamilyInstancePlacement method, now that API access is also possible in the project browser view. He also went right ahead to suggest and implement a solution: Question: One of the new features of the Revit 2014 API is the possibility to select elements within the Project Browser view. If the Project Browser view is active, selecting a ribbon control that uses PromptForFamilyInstancePlacement will fail because the user will... Read more →

No Command Launching from Dockable Panel

Here is an issue that has come up a few times now and is worthwhile clarifying: how to operate on a Revit document from a dockable panel. The dockable panel UI API framework was introduced in Revit 2014. Its use is demonstrated by the DockableDialogs SDK sample, including modeless dialog design and external events, and also by the simpler dockable panel sample. The fact that a dockable panel lives in a modeless context is apparently confusing for some. Since the... Read more →

Boolean Operations for 2D Polygons

Once again, I have a special titbit for you to start the week. Enjoy! Some of the most important utility tools for analysis of BIM and CAD models in general need to determine simple properties of and relationships between 2D points and polygons, e.g. point in polygon determination, area calculation and Boolean operations for overlapping areas, for instance for room and wall adjacent area calculations. Some of these, but not all, are covered by the Revit API, though often only... Read more →