The Building Coder

RevitLookup Geometry Visualisation

New RevitLookup BIM element geometry visualization, and 1000 GitHub stars – Versions 2025.0.5, 2025.0.6 and 2025.0.7 – Wiki... Read more →

Journal Magic, Adjacent Rooms and Room Boundary

Taking a look at journal files, room boundaries, adjacent rooms, a ForgeTypeId question and where AI might lead – Harry's journal file magic – Closed contiguous room boundary loop – Challenges identifying adjacent rooms – ForgeTypeId for 'Other' parameter group – AI may obsolete all apps... Read more →

Contour Lines, Batch Processor and Dynamo Shapely

Powerful tools and solutions for batch processing, 2D geometric analysis and toposolids – Revit batch processor sample code – Shapely for Dynamo – Retrieve Toposolid contour lines – Internet artifacts... Read more →

Xgbxml Fixes Building Geometry Gaps

A mighty beautiful Python solution for fixing gaps in the building geometry and new AI-related titbits – Fixing building geometry gaps – Open and render gbXML BIM model – Identify gaps in geometry – Add missing surfaces – Verify waterproof – LLaVA large language and vision assistant – Moonvalley text to video – DETR model detects objects in images... Read more →

Element Diff Compare, Shapely and RDBE

Exciting new and enhanced tools and libraries to check out – Revit element difference comparison – The Revit database explorer RDBE – The Shapely Python 2D geometry library – Measuring developer productivity... Read more →

Export, gbXML and Python Tips

Discussions on Python, handling DLLs, and various aspects of exporting to gbXML, FBX and MongoDB – DLL paradise in Python – Multiple gbXML export – GbXML energy settings – Automate FBX export with SendKeys – RFA export to MongoDB... Read more →

RBP, Materials, Their Assets and the Visual API

Two very different aspects of BIM materials, filtering for annotations and a powerful batch processor utility: – GetMaterialArea behaviour varies – Material assets and the Visual API – Filter for annotation families – Revit batch processor RBP... Read more →

Docs, Lookup, MEP Calculation and APS DevCon

Good news on APS and the Revit API for the weekend – APS DevCon in Munich and SF – Forma for AEC – RevitApiDocs supports Revit 2024 – RevitLookup 2024.0.8 – User MEP calculation 2024 – Wastewater pipe calculation – The password game... Read more →

Analysis of Macros, Journals and Add-In Manager

Looking at Revit macro usage, add-in manager debug/trace functionality and journal analysis in Python and Dynamo – Revit macro study shareback – Add-in manager with debug trace – Journal file analysis – Plugging the HSL colour format... Read more →

TBC Samples 2023 and the New Structural API

Migrating The Building Coder samples, I encountered the same problems as others trying to update obsolete structural API code, so let's take a look at some resources assisting us in that area – Not migrating the derived analytical model – Revit 2023 Structural API... Read more →

Kfpopeye Open Source, AVF and Other Cleanup

Open source projects that help clean up parameter values, the Revit model and other operations, an important AVF cleanup required to prevent crashing, and some youngsters cleaning up some cash – Kfpopeye open source projects – AVF result clean-up before design option switch – Young teen and kid sister crypto entrepreneurs... Read more →

Painting Stairs and Shooting for the Beams

Two Revit API discussion forum threads that I am currently involved in – Painting stairs – Ray tracing vs bounding box to find beams intersecting columns... Read more →

Roadmap Today and Sorting Non-Planar Curve Loops

Very short notice on the Ask Me Anything session taking place later today, and a vastly enhanced method for sorting curve loops – Today: Inside the Factory, Ask Me Anything – Sorting non-planar curve loops... Read more →

Boundary Elements and Stirrup Constraints

A lengthy and fruitful conversation on implementing valid rebar stirrup constraints and more advice on determining boundary elements for the entire building and individual rooms – Rebar stirrup constraints – Exterior bounding walls – All walls including non-bounding interior walls – Floors and ceilings – Revit API and UX style guide – Today's collective action problem... Read more →

Exterior Walls and Room Bounding Elements

Let's look at the outer boundaries of both buildings and rooms today – Finding exterior walls continued – Retrieving room bounding elements – Comic Sans is a public good... Read more →

Dynamo Book and Texture Bitmap UV Coordinates

The week is coming to an end all too quickly... here are some compelling topics before we enter the weekend – Explaining texture UV mapping using AVF – Más Allá de Dynamo Spanish-language book – A detailed 3D model of a human cell... Read more →

Using ReferenceIntersector with a Linked File

Here are our topics for today – What is Forge in 90 seconds – Locally opening RVT file managed by BIM360 – Programming tools for Robobat – Using ReferenceIntersector in linked files... Read more →

C# Book, Chinese Revit API Tutorial and Insight

I very much enjoyed my quick visit to Swissbau Basel yesterday and meeting so many wonderful people there. Here are some recent getting started tips on various areas: programming in general, C#, the Revit API and Insight – The C# Yellow Book – Chinese Revit API tutorial – Insight into Insight... Read more →

Cylinder Intersection and Vision of Online Assets

A surprising new aspect of Revit's built-in solid intersection algorithms and a ten-year vision for online assets – No face to face intersection without edges – Evolution of media creation – Vision of online assets... Read more →

11 Years and Revit API Docs Full Text Search

Happy Birthday to The Building Coder! The online Revit API documentation now supports full text search. Dynamo implements a new ViewCone functionality... Read more →

Spatial Geometry, Add-In Manager and Show Reels

New Autodesk show reels, a solution to the lack of an add-in manager in the Revit 2020 SDK, an update for the SpatialElementGeometryCalculator and an interesting observation on English spelling – 2019 Autodesk show reels – The Add-In Manager for Revit 2019 still works – Spatial element geometry calculator update – English spelling... Read more →

Fire Rating Zone Intersection

Let's tackle a 2D fire rating zone intersection task. Actually, it was originally raised a 3D intersection task. Reducing it to 2D makes it much more tractable – 3D solid extrusion creation and intersection task – 2D area intersection task – Jack's sample and description – Soffit subdivision sample code – Cleanup and GitHub repository... Read more →

Floor Area Above Room and Mysterious Hide

Today, we focus on two pure programming questions from the Revit API discussion forum – Area of an exterior floor above a room – Mysterious element hiding activity... Read more →

Exported File Path and Revit Structural Analysis SDK

I am busy in the Revit API discussion forum. However, you can check the discussions there yourself. Here and now, I'll mention some different topics – oops, one of them is from there after all – RST and the Structural Analysis SDK – Determining the path of a recently exported file – Driving NavisWorks programmatically via ExecuteCommand – The Autodesk assistant Ava and the uncanny valley... Read more →

Revit Tools for MomenTUM Pedestrian Simulation

Christian Thieme of the Chair of Computational Modeling and Simulation at TUM, the Technical University Munich, shares his tools connecting Revit to the MomenTUM agent-based pedestrian simulation framework – Giving something back to the community – Project overview – Export workflow – Import and display results workflow – Transformation from XYZ to UV... Read more →

RvtFader, AVF, Ray Tracing and Signal Attenuation

I implemented a neat new little sample add-in, RvtFader, that calculates and displays signal attenuation caused by distance and obstacles, specifically walls. It uses two very interesting pieces of Revit API functionality – AVF, the Analysis Visualisation Framework, for displaying graphical data in a transient manner directly in the BIM – The ReferenceIntersector ray tracing functionality to detect walls and other obstacles between two points. In the course of implementing the AVF part of things, I also resuscitated my trusty old RevitWebcam add-in – RevitWebcam – RvtFader – Task – Implementation – Further Reading... Read more →

Family Category and Two Energy Model Types

Let's pick up two more topics from the Revit API discussion forum today – Family Category property is not always set – Two different energy analysis model types – gbXML export options – BuildingEnvelopeAnalyzer class – EnergyAnalysisDetailModel creation from building elements and volumes – EnergyAnalysisDetailModelOptions... Read more →

Self-Organising Architecture, Voxel-Based Energy Analysis

I had an interesting chat last week with a group of students from the University of Augsburg on how to perform energy analysis on a bunch of autonomously assembled small building blocks, such as a colony of ants might put together. How can the resulting small building blocks be converted to a valid Revit BIM that can be used for building performance analysis? – BPA is now Insight360 – Self-organising construction and architecture – Back to the ants – project summary – Q & A – Two different energy model types... Read more →

Point Boundary Condition and Revit 2017 SDK

I arrived safe and sound in San Francisco via Vancouver and am now working on the final preparations for the Forge DevCon and 3D Web Fest. Before getting to that, here are some quick notes from my short exploration last week to produce a rather overdue list of the new Revit 2017 SDK samples and on creating a point boundary condition on a structural column – New Revit 2017 SDK Samples – Creating Point Boundary Condition on End of Structural Column... Read more →

More on Wall Opening Areas per Room

Håvard added some clarifications and background information on his sample code to determine wall opening areas per room: I have some questions on Håvard's initial approaches. Using a Boolean subtraction between transient solids from the actual wall and the family symbol sounds like the right track, but I don’t understand the need for the family instance, because the wall already provides the net geometry... Read more →

Determining Wall Opening Areas per Room

We continue the rather exhaustive exploration of calculating net and gross wall areas per room, and two other announcements, pointers to interesting sources of information – Why Autodesk has a Labs – Dal BIM in poi – Italian BIM – Determining wall opening areas per room – Håvard's SpatialElementGeometryCalculator enhancement – External command mainline – Test run... Read more →