The Building Coder

Starting to Clean Up For the Break

I am starting to clear up some open issues before the break. Here are a few that I can handle right here and now: Autodesk University classes ready for viewing and download Building Performance Analysis update Daylighting Analysis Tool for Revit update I will obviously not be able to magically transform the entire backlog of interesting topics I still wish to share and discuss. Still, I am continuously learning to be active and still take things easy, do what I... Read more →

Setting the View Display Background

Here is an exploration of various attempts to ensure that the view background is always white, regardless of all user settings like inverted background etc. Before getting to that, I have to share an important discovery for me and my Tammik namesakes by my sister Helene, who recently consulted an Estonian translator. My last name is Estonian and comes from 'tamm', meaning 'oak'. Tammik is a small group of oaks, or oak grove, a common North European name, cf. Eklund... Read more →

Driving CNC Fabrication and Shared Parameters

The topic of CNC fabrication of Revit BIM elements is continuing to grow in popularity. As you already know, I published the ExportWallboard add-in to automatically isolate and export wall parts individually to DXF for CNC fabrication, then enhanced, renamed and published it on GitHub as ExportCncFab for William Spier's Autodesk University class on Design to Fabrication. Those discussions were explicitly related to CNC fabrication up front. Numerous other topics here are also useful in that context. I was unable... Read more →

Visual Studio 2013 May Partially Support Edit and Continue

The West European DevDays conferences are completed. I am on my way back from Gothenburg to Switzerland. En route, I would like to share this strange and useful discovery by Peter Muigg of CAD Anwendungen Muigg, who says: In spite of what was said in the article on debugging Revit 2014 API with Visual Studio 2013 and the Revit API discussion thread on the same topic, Visual Studio 2013 does in fact partially support edit and continue. Just as stated... Read more →

DevLab Munich

I arrived in Gothenburg last night. Today I participate in my last DevDay conference for this year. Adam and Jim are continuing to Moscow, where they will be supported by Vladimir and the rest of the team there. Last week we conducted DevDay conferences in Paris, Milano and Farnborough, ending with a two-day stay in Munich to hold a DevDay conference followed by a DevLab workshop. A DevLab is an open event where developers roll up bringing their current work... Read more →

Saving a New Central File to Revit Server

One topic brought up at Scott Conover's worksharing roundtable was the question of how to save a new Revit central file to a Revit Server. Participants even questioned whether this is possible at all with the current API. Well, it is, and we look at the exact steps to achieve that below as well as: DevDay in Farnborough, cabs and flights Saving a new central file to Revit Server Consistent naming of transactions and transaction groups Changing the category of... Read more →

Security, Framing Cross Section Analyser and REX

My topic for today is structural cross section analysis, i.e. determination of the cross section profile of beam, columns, braces, etc., and the various completely different approaches one can take to achieve this. I also demonstrate how to make use of some of the powerful functionality provided by the REX toolkit without building my entire application on top of the REX framework. Before getting to that, though, let me mention where we are with the DevDays conference tour: DevDays in... Read more →

Triggering Immediate External Event Execution

We held our first West European Devday in Paris on Monday and I am now sitting in the airport headed for Milano. En route to Milano, I worked at testing Joe Ye's trick to trigger the Idling event (potential SetRaiseWithoutDelay workaround) to force an immediate execution of my external event. I also added a comment from Guy Robinson on Revit requiring focus that had me worried for a moment. However, the solution is easy! Before we get to that, here... Read more →

Replacing an Idling Event Handler by an External Event

I arrived back in Europe safe and sound from America. Healthy, as well, in spite of air conditioning and the freezing temperatures in some of the Autodesk University conference rooms. Thank God, I went well prepared with long-sleeved woollen underwear and thick heavy sweaters to face the arctic challenges of the desert town. As I hinted at when describing my last day at AU, I realised that I can significantly improve the implementation of the RoomEditorApp subscription to real-time database... Read more →

Nightingale M3U and Denormalized Filename Characters

Here is a post addressing a Mac denormalized filename character issue, music players on Mac and Python file manipulation, so nothing to do with the Revit API. It appears that Songbird is dead, Nightingale is its successor, and nothing much else is happening on that front, neither now nor ever. I guess Nightingale will die a natural death too one of these days, but I am still using it so far anyway. Just like Songbird, Nightingale does not provide any... Read more →

AU Day 3, ReCap & Cloud-based Round-trip Model Editing

When you get to read this, I will be sitting in a plane at 30'000 feet over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean... or somewhere over Greenland, whatever. Thursday was the third and last day of Autodesk University. I went out for a quick beer with some of my ex-Autodesk-colleagues from decades ago on Wednesday evening, and a very nice time was had by all. It turned out to be not quite so quick, however, and not just one beer,... Read more →

AU Day 2, Worksharing and Revit 2014 API Roundtables

Here is my report on Wednesday at Autodesk University, following the DevDay pre-event conference on Monday and the first real day at AU on Tuesday. These are my main activities of the day in chronological order, plus pointers to a fantastic class or two that I missed and want to highlight anyway: Virtually human – modelling the human body using BIM Design to fabrication Revit add-ins that cooperate with worksharing Worksharing roundtable Revit API roundtable Virtually human – modelling the... Read more →

AU Day 1, Revit 2014 API Class and Bounding Box Rotation

Tuesday was the first real day at AU after the DevDay pre-event conference yesterday. Here are my main activities of the day in chronological order: Advanced Revit 2014 API features and samples AU Keynote by Jeff and Carl DevLab and bounding box rotation Adding a marker at the Revit project origin Download Advanced Revit 2014 API Features and Samples I presented my first class DV2010 – Advanced Revit 2014 API Features and Samples right away starting at the very first... Read more →

DevDay@au Chronicle Estorage View Depth Sound of Noise

Monday was the first day at Autodesk University in Las Vegas, dedicated to the forward-looking confidential DevDays conference with the main focus on the rEvolution – where desktop meets the cloud. In spite of the confidential nature of the information discussed, I am sure I can share an at least an outline of the content here in public with you. I'll also touch on a couple of other interesting topics that cropped up on the past few days, such as... Read more →

Arrival at AU and The Story of Stuff

I arrived safe and sound at AU. Last week was pretty hectic with preparations for both AU and DevDays. The weekend was also pretty full. Unlike previous years, I did not leave Europe until the last possible moment, so no visit to the desert for me this time around. The reason was my friend Sonja, who invited 100 friends to a half-day 'Be the Change' or Awakening the Dreamer Symposium on Saturday afternoon along the lines of The Pachamama Alliance.... Read more →