The Building Coder

A Pee Cee Free Day

I celebrated my birthday with a PC-free day. My colleague Joe Ye sent me a nice (digital) cake from Beijing: Joe points out that the character on the cake means longevity or birthday, and peach is the traditional food for birthdays. Thank you, Joe! I completely avoided starting up the computer, not even to listen to music or fiddle with photos. I shot a couple, though, on a nice long autumn walk: Larger... Larger still... What a huge beautiful world... Read more →

Erasing Extensible Storage with Linked Files

Here is a query and resolution raised by Marc in the discussion forum on erasing extensible storage data with linked files, followed by a reminder of the need to regenerate the model to avoid accessing stale data and hint of possible things to come related to Revit and cloud computing: Erasing Extensible Storage Data with Linked Files Question: I am calling the method Schema.EraseSchemaAndAllEntities in a project containing linked documents, and it is throwing an InternalException. How can this be... Read more →

Debugging Revit 2014 API with Visual Studio 2013

The officially supported development platforms for Revit add-ins are Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition. The important factor is really only the .NET environment, Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. Of course, you can also use the built-in SharpDevelop development macro environment. This information comes directly from the horse's mouth, i.e. the Revit 2014 API Developers Guide – happily, back online again – section on requirements. The Revit Python Shell and Revit Ruby Shell, based on IronPython... Read more →

Determining Whether Parameter is Type or Instance Bound

Here is a question that came up now and then in the past, on how to determine whether a given parameter retrieved from the document shared parameter bindings is bound to a type or instances. Question: I have not been able to find a way in which to determine if a parameter is a type or instance in the Revit API. The only reference I could find was to the FamilyParameter.IsInstance property. However, this only works if you are in... Read more →

Translated Shared Parameter GUID Consolidation

Obviously, a language independent application is much easier to implement and maintain than a language dependent one, once you have the internationalisation framework for it in place. By the way, I took this opportunity to add the new category I18n to this blog to collect these kind of topics. The Revit API offers support for creating language independent add-ins, e.g. by using the built-in parameter and category enumeration values instead of localised strings. For the inverse operation, the LabelUtils and... Read more →

RoomEditorApp Idling and Benchmarking Timer

I solved my two RoomEditorApp Idling issues! They were especially worrying due to the fact that I am planning to present this application in my Autodesk university class DV1736 on Cloud-Based, Real-Time, Round-Trip, 2D Revit Model Editing on Any Mobile Device. By the way, you should now enrol in the AU classes you are interested in – unless you already did :-) Go to the AU class catalogue, sign in, click 'View All Classes', use the filters or keyword search... Read more →

Localised Unit Abbreviations

I recently discussed how to generate unit abbreviations, both using a hard coded list and automatically generating them from the UnitSymbolType enumeration values. I implemented the CmdDutAbbreviation command in The Building Coder samples to test these abbreviations, and also enhanced it to display the Display Unit Type to Unit Types mapping that we added in the meantime. Victor Chekalin, or Виктор Чекалин, reacted to this analysis and adds: Thank you for your investigation. But... There is a big 'but' :-)... Read more →

Revit 2014 Developer Guide PDF

Happy Sunday! Extra, extra, breaking news! As I just mentioned a few days back, the Revit API developer guide is back on WikiHelp again. Still, as we recently discussed here and in the Revit API discussion forum, a PDF version of the developer guide can also come in very handy now and then, e.g. for offline perusal. Ian alias Keldar67 now repeated his heroic Revit 2013 feat and presents the Revit 2014 API developer guide in PDF format. Please take... Read more →

Multi-Version Visual Studio Revit Add-In Wizard

Developers often ask how to support multiple versions of a Revit add-in from the same codebase. Many have implemented solutions for this using various Visual Studio project settings. Alexander Ignatovich of Investicionnaya Venchurnaya Companiya went one step further and implemented a version of the Visual Studio Revit add-in wizard that automatically generates an add-in skeleton supporting both Revit 2013 and 2014 in the same Visual Studio project. He is very kindly sharing is with us here, saying: I have one... Read more →

The Developer Guide is Back on WikiHelp

Let's look at a couple of topics today, in order of decreasing relevance to the Revit API: The Revit API developer's guide on Autodesk help Using Dynamic Update and Extensible Storage in family documents 3D modelling in a browser 3D access to Smithsonian historic artefacts Comet ISON may be visible in daylight soon The Revit API Developer's Guide is Live on Autodesk Help The title says it all. Here is the link to the Revit 2014 API Developers Guide table... Read more →

Intimate Revit Database Exploration with the Python Shell

I keep repeating the importance of being able to explore the Revit database model efficiently to understand what is going on. This can even be important for end users, and is certainly much more so for developers. The first and foremost important tool is obviously RevitLookup. The BipChecker is less important and yet also handy for exploring element parameters. The disadvantage of these two is that they only explore existing values provided by properties and parameters. They do not offer... Read more →

Revit 2014 Update Release 2

Revit 2014 Update Release 2 has been posted to the Autodesk Revit product pages: Revit 2014 Update Release 2 Revit Architecture 2014 Update Release 2 Revit MEP 2014 Update Release 2 Revit Structure 2014 Update Release 2 As usual, the update release uses service pack technology and does not require a full install. Prior to installing the Update Release 1, please verify that you are running the First Customer Ship build of Autodesk Revit 2014, build 20130308_1515 or the Update... Read more →

Singleton Application versus Multiple Command Instances

I recently discussed the RoomEditorApp external application, the Revit add-in part of my cloud-based real-time round-trip 2D Revit model editing application, while creating the RoomEditorApp GitHub repository and migrating it to Revit 2014. I also mentioned that I was mysteriously unable to unsubscribe from the Idling event. I raised this mystifying question with the development team and received a very satisfying answer, which includes some important information on how external applications and commands are handled and instantiated by the Revit... Read more →

User MEP Calculation Sample on GitHub

I published the user MEP calculation sample a couple of months ago as an example of making use of the external services framework to redefine the algorithms used for internal calculations in Revit. Nmulder is happily making use of this to redefine pipe pressure loss calculations, but running into a generic add-in error on HTML generation that I hoped to be able to sort out: Question: I have been playing around with the Revit API recently in order to provide... Read more →

Placing Equidistant Points Along a Curve

How can one generate equidistant points along a Revit curve element? This is not completely trivial, since the Revit API only provides functionality to evaluate the curve based on its internal parameterisation, and not based on real world space coordinates. I recently showed how to create a midcurve between two curve elements, also based on evaluating the two curves in their natural internal parameterisation space. Now I looked at the task of placing equidistant points along a curve with the... Read more →

Determining Host Document Location of a Linked Element

It is getting rather cold and wet and dreary outside now, so I spent some time answering the following excellently documented developer query on relating the coordinates of a linked file with its host. Just as I was about to publish it, Kon raised the very same issue in a comment on the recent discussion on accessing individual elements in linked projects: "When I try to relate the 'internal' XYZ LocationPoint of the linked document to the main model, they... Read more →

Mapping Display Unit Type to Unit Types

Yesterday, we looked at unit abbreviations and some other aspects of the new Revit 2014 Unit API. I mentioned that one might be able to use the FormatUtils.Format or UnitFormatUtils.Format methods to generate a string representation of a given numeric value, extract a unit abbreviation from it, and that I was not looking further at that option, lacking a UnitType to feed it with, only having a DisplayUnitType to work with. That led me to wonder whether there might be... Read more →

Unit Abbreviations

Today, we look at determining the units for a given parameter, and specifically providing a suitable unit abbreviation for it. The Revit 2014 API introduced a new Unit API with a large number of enhancements to complete and simplify unit handling issues, and I have not yet explored all of them in depth. Here is the overview of it from What's New in the Revit 2014 API: Units API The API for Units in Revit has been expanded and changed.... Read more →

RoomEditorApp Architecture and External Application

A couple of days ago, I wrote about creating the RoomEditorApp GitHub repository for the Revit add-in part of my cloud-based real-time round-trip 2D Revit model editing application on any mobile device and promised to discuss its implementation details anon. Well, the obvious place to start that is by providing an architectural overview, followed by a look at its external application implementation. I'll also mention an issue with unresponsive Idling that I am currently experiencing and hope to resolve, and... Read more →