The Building Coder

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Revit API and Forge updates – keep up to date with the new enhancements by joining the upcoming webinars; also enjoy the fact that your Revit knowledge is a valuable skill – DevDays online schedule – Revit is one hot job skill... Read more →

Creating a Sweep with Multiple Closed Loops

A demonstration of using the NewSweep method was very kindly provided in yet another helpful answer by Frank @Fair59 Aarssen to the Revit API discussion forum thread on how to create a sweep with multiple closed loops in profile. Let me also highlight an interesting TED talk on the topic of poverty versus universal basic income – Creating a sweep with multiple closed loops – Poverty versus universal basic income... Read more →

Accessing and Modifying Settings in the Ini File

Some interesting settings are stored in and can be modified by editing the Revit ini file. Peter @pgerz pointed out yet another possibility in his answer to the Revit API discussion forum thread on adding a project template to 'New Project' via API. Question: I noticed the UI method for adding a project template to the 'New Project' dialog on the Start Window by going to Options > File Locations and clicking the little plus symbol... Read more →

Stable Reference Relationships

Håvard Leding explores relationships between stable reference of main elements and their sub-elements, related to the intriguing undocumented ElementId relationships and stable representation magic voodoo. We need to access the sketch association to the element being sketched. I printed out stable references for 3 floors, and also the references for each ModelLine in their 3 Sketch elements... Read more →

Aborting Filtered Element Collection

I just discovered an interesting and not completely obvious aspect of using a filtered element collector in the Revit API discussion forum thread on aborting a long running filtered element collector. Question: I have really large models where I use an ElementIntersectsElementFilter that can take a long time to process, and sometimes I want to abort it in a graceful way. Is this possible? Read more →

Preparing a Revit Add-in for Design Automation

Today I discuss the next step in my IfcSpaceZoneBoundaries project, how to prepare a Revit add-in for use in the DA4R or Design Automation for Revit environment and figuring out how to best handle it in the VS solution – Context, add-in functionality and history – Preparing the add-in for DA4R – Local testing versus live deployment – User defined input arguments for DA4R – Logging of results... Read more →

Link in and Analyse IFC File Zones and Spaces

I am working on extracting room and zone information from IFC files, both geometry and relationships, specifically room and zone boundaries and containment. My new IfcSpaceZoneBoundaries add-in project retrieves this information, exports it to CSV and demonstrates a host of other important aspects – What happens on linking in an IFC file? – Read user configuration input settings from a file – Log messages, warnings and errors to an output file – Read the IFC properties stored as shared parameters – Extract the horizontal boundary information from a DirectShape element – Export the relevant data to CSV – Programmatically link in an IFC file into a Revit RVT project – Retrieve all currently linked-in IFC files from the Revit application... Read more →