The Building Coder

Curve Following Face and Bounding Box Implementation

Continuing the research and development for my cloud-based round-trip 2D Revit model editing project, I looked at using the ExtrusionAnalyzer to create a plan view boundary profile for the furniture and equipment family instances and implemented a utility method SortCurvesContiguous to sort and re-orient the curves it returns into a closed contiguous loop. An alternative and more effective method is to use the Edge AsCurveFollowingFace call instead of AsCurve, as we shall see below. In any case, we want to... Read more →

Idling Enhancements and External Events

Revit 2013 has been released, and I presented an overview of the Revit 2013 API and the new SDK samples last week. One of the areas of enhancement is the Idling event and interaction with modeless dialogues, which also was the subject of Arnošt Löbel's Autodesk University 2011 class CP5381 on asynchronous interactions and managing modeless UI. As I mentioned, the enhancements and new functionality are demonstrated by the new ModelessForm_ExternalEvent and ModelessForm_IdlingEvent SDK samples. Here is an overview of... Read more →

Melbourne Day Two

On the second day of the Revit API training here in Melbourne, we addressed a number of further interesting issues, both basic and beyond. Our sample code ended up demonstrating the following functionality: Revit MEP model creation: place a duct. Geometrical analysis: retrieving unique geometry vertices from a selected element. Besides that, we looked at extensible storage, and I compiled an updated version of the RstLink sample for Revit Structure 2012. I also received interesting comments on a previous post... Read more →

Avoid Idling

The advice to 'avoid Idling' may sound rather puritanical and a bit on the workaholic side, but I pay it special heed since it comes from Arnošt Löbel, Sr. Principal Engineer in the Revit development team, our resident Revit Idling expert, who already provided many (or almost all?) important insights in this and other related areas: Transaction responsibility Regeneration option best practices Asynchronous API calls and Idling AutoJoinElements Closing the active document and why not to Modeless door lister flaws... Read more →

Keep Dialogues Modal!

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, at least in the parts of the world I normally frequent. Just as the sun reached the end of its descent, we finally reached the end of our conference tour, here in the UK. I am exhausted and very much looking forward to returning home. There will be only rather a short time left to prepare for Christmas and my children's visit when I arrive. Meanwhile, here are a... Read more →

AU Day Two

Kean pointed out a few of the things going on here at AU, many of which directly affect me well. It is so exciting to meet all these people here doing impressive things and with innovative empowering projects, and also simply wonderful to catch up with colleagues that I have so much close virtual interaction with and otherwise seldom get to see face to face. And lots and lots of enthusiastic blog readers! Thank you for all your appreciation and... Read more →

AU Begins and Point Cloud Overview

Once again I left the desert and the climbing in Red Rock and entered the air conditioned world of conference land. This year I was pretty leisurely about climbing, although I did at least a few climbs every day. I slept well and long, hiked in to Red Rock from the highway, read a book in the desert sunshine, and finally met up with people in the late morning. A memorable experience on my birthday on Saturday was meeting another... Read more →

AU Virtual and Collaborative Translation

Here are two noteworthy recent little news items on Registration for AU Virtual and the Collaborative translation of Homestyler. AU Virtual Registration has opened for Autodesk University Virtual with its live and on-demand classes. It is free for students and educators: The Autodesk student and educator community has free access to Autodesk University Virtual from November 29-30. AU Virtual provides an opportunity for engineers, architects and designers to discover the latest trends and technologies via an online event with live... Read more →

Revit and AEC API Classes at Autodesk University

As you certainly know by now, Autodesk University is an excellent opportunity to meet with the top experts in your industry and learn about the latest trends and technologies that will help you stay competitive. Here are some of the benefits: Learn techniques to use in your job right away. Whether you're designing buildings, routing transcontinental pipelines, or animating the next blockbuster movie, you can learn something immediately useful at AU. Find out what others are doing. AU is the... Read more →

TextNote Lost in Space?

Here is the result of another interesting discussion I had with Rudolf Honke of Mensch und Maschine acadGraph GmbH. We already looked at some aspects of text formatting such as alignment, rotation and size in the past. So whilst there are some manipulations we can perform on text notes, it is rather irking that their Location property is not accessible. Seen through the API, the Location property value is always either a LocationPoint or LocationCurve instance. I assume that neither... Read more →

Reference to Analytical Curve

The Autodesk University 2011 Class Catalog is now live and includes a full listing of both AU Las Vegas and AU Virtual Classes. Here are the my three classes: Lecture CP4451: Extensible Storage in the Revit 2012 API Hands-On Lab CP6760-L: Revit 2012 API Extensible Storage Virtual CP4453: Everything in Place with Revit MEP Programming So I have lots to prepare. For a full list of the classes presented by my colleagues in the ADN team, please refer to Kean's... Read more →

MEP Sample Code for Revit 2012

One of my sessions at Autodesk University 2011 is CP4453 Everything in Place with Revit MEP Programming. It will cover both the new Revit MEP 2012 API features and the Revit MEP API in general. In preparation for that, as well as preparing new samples, e.g. on placeholder elements, I am also updating the existing material, especially the ADN Revit MEP sample code. The old Revit 2011 material from AU 2010 is available online, for instance from the list of... Read more →