The Building Coder

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 →

Flip, Mirror, Transform and Transient Graphics

How are reflections like flip and mirror reflected in the BIM element transform? – Transient elements hack – Temporary incanvas graphics API video – Shared versus non-shared parameter creation – Direct PDF export and DA4R... Read more →

Transient Graphics, Humane AI, BI and Lockdown

A quick look at various methods to integrate transient graphics into Revit and pointers to articles of interest on other current non-API-related topics such as chess AI, basic income and the effectiveness of lockdowns – Transient graphics – AI learns to emulate human-style chess – Basic income as fault-tolerant engineering – Lockdown effectivity... 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 →

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 →

Work Half, AKS Opener, RvtFader and ForgeFader

I completed a first revision of the ForgeFader project, bringing it up to par with RvtFader. It is pretty cool seeing the same functionality implemented in two such different ways, on completely different platforms, using different tools. Alan Seidel shared another exciting Revit add-in. First and not least, another exciting topic for me personally is switching to half-time work – Work half – AKS Opener – Video – GitHub repository – Why? – Specific interest – RvtFader – ForgeFader... 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 →

Intersect Solid Filter, AVF vs DirectShape Debugging

We already discussed the important topics of the analysis visualisation framework AVF, DirectShape (mesh import, new functionality), and the ElementIntersectsSolidFilter. Today, let's look at a little-know restriction on the latter and how to work around it, raised and solved by Miroslav Schonauer, Solution Architect in Autodesk Consulting, and Scott Conover, Software Development Manager of the Revit API team: ElementIntersectsSolidFilter problem Resolution Rectangular prism solid construction DirectShape is easier than AVF for prototyping and visualisation ElementIntersectsSolidFilter Problem Question: I have a... Read more →

Futureproofing and Determining Intersecting Elements

I continued cleaning up the obsolete API usage in The Building Coder samples, an... Read more →

Display a Geometry Debugging Point in the Model

Here are some pointers from a conversation I had with Daren Thomas on how to display a reference point in the model for debugging purposes that may be on general interest. Question: I am playing around with the FindReferencesWithContextByDirection method and would like to display the references found as coloured blobs or something in the model. How can I achieve this, please? This question could also be simplified into: how to create an easily visible dot at a 3D point... Read more →

Apollonian Sphere Packing via Web Service and AVF

Spheres are not as common as planar faceted objects in the architectural domain. In spite of that, this week has been the week of the spheres, after looking at how to generate spherical solids, display them using AVF, and use them for geometrical proximity filtering. We'll round this off now by displaying lots of spheres. A convenient and interesting way to generate a large number of them is to use Kean Walmsley's Apollonian gasket and sphere packing web service to... Read more →

Sphere Creation for AVF and Filtering

I created my first sphere in the Revit API :-) I was slightly surprised that it was harder than expected. The Revit 2012 API introduced the GeometryCreationUtilities class for creating solids. It provides no simple sphere primitive, however. It does provide the following five methods, as described in the What's New listing for the Revit 2012 API: GeometryCreationUtilities The new utility class GeometryCreationUtilities offers the ability to create solid geometry from input curves: CreateBlendGeometry CreateExtrusionGeometry CreateRevolvedGeometry CreateSweptGeometry CreateSweptBlendGeometry The resulting... Read more →

The Revit 2013 Structure API

I migrated the ADN Revit Structure API training material to Revit 2013, which led me to put together the following summary of the structural API enhancements and some details of the migration steps: API enhancements RstLabs migration NewRstLab migration RstAvfDmu migration Materials Revit Structure 2013 API Enhancements I mentioned a few structure specific enhancements in the Revit 2013 API. They are discussed in somewhat more detail in the DevDays Online presentation on What's New in Revit 2013 and the complementary... 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 →

Revit Webcam 2012

I recently discussed the elimination of warnings about use of deprecated API methods from The Building Coder samples. In a similar vein, and for similar reasons, I also decided to migrate to Revit 2012 and clean up the RevitWebcam sample that I implemented to demonstrate the use of the Idling event when it was first introduced in the Revit 2011 API. Please note that this sample is intentionally not related to any BIM specific workflow. A webcam just provides an... Read more →

AVF Displays Intersections and Highlights Rooms

We held a DevLab in Gothenburg yesterday with lots of interesting things to discuss with our Scandinavian developer guests. Today we are in Munich, Germany. So is Kean :-) One of the topics that came up yesterday is a thing I have been wanting to write about for over a year now and never gotten around to, the use of the AVF or Analysis Visualisation Framework to display temporary geometry to the user. I used it myself to display a... Read more →

Display Webcam Image on Building Element Face

We are now ready to implement RevitWebcam, making use of the webcam image grabber that I presented yesterday. As I explained, the idea is to make use of the new Revit API Idling event which allows semi-asynchronous access to the Revit API. In order to display the webcam image updating itself in real-time on a Revit building element face, I implement the following steps: Select a face on a BIM element. Set up a spatial field primitive for it. Set... Read more →