The Building Coder

MergedViews and Exporting to a Single DWG

Some insight on the use of the MergedViews property provided by the DGN, DWG and DWG export options classes and other ideas to export multiple views into a single DWG file – Question: I want to combine and export multiple views into one single DWG file. I set the option MergedViews, but the code still generates multiple DWG files for the views... Read more →

Sheet to Model Coordinate Conversion

James Carroll raised a question on the discussion of exact viewport positioning on the "gap in the API related to converting between model and sheet coordinates." This is exactly what we are trying to do! We want to get element boundary geometry in paper space. Is this gap still present in the Revit 2016 API? Are you aware of a workaround? ... Read more →

Batch Processing, DWFx Links and Future-Proofing

The never-ending stream of Revit API topics continues. Today, let's look at: Unrestricted VendorId. Retrieving DWFx links. Batch processing Revit documents. Future-proofing The Building Coder samples. Recent Revit API AEC DevBlog posts: Delete custom family parameter. JoinGeometryUtils.JoinGeometry for walls and columns. Reading gross and rentable area elements. Unrestricted VendorId In the past, we recommended using an Autodesk registered developer symbol or RDS as your vendor id, stored in the add-in manifest VendorId tag (starting from the Revit 2012 extensible storage... Read more →

Properties in DWF, IFC, Tables and Extensible Storage

Let's discuss a couple of questions that accumulated recently on various aspects of properties in general: Properties in DWF export Mapping Revit and IFC properties Storing a table in a project Updating versus adding new extensible storage schemas Before getting to that, I'll briefly mention the happy fact that I yesterday went on my first outdoor climb for a while, up the Balmflue south ridge, a nice long route of 16 rope lengths in the Swiss Jura hills close to... Read more →

Views Displaying Given Element, SVG and NoSQL

I am slowly getting back to normal working mode after the AEC Hackathon last weekend and the neat project that we worked on there, so I finally get around to publishing this post that I started working on last week. The only remaining issue is of a physical nature: my feet are still swollen after flying to New York on Friday, sitting and working non-stop at the Hackathon from Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon, standing for a couple of hours... Read more →

Element Id – Export, Unique, Navisworks and Other Ids

Here are a couple of discussions on the topic of Revit element ids, unique ids, and export ids. Some have been hanging around for a while, while others are more recent. We already looked at some aspects of this in the discussion on IFC GUID generation. Let's go through another iteration now: Unique Id versus ElementId to store in external database Local Uniqueness of the Revit Unique Id Navisworks versus Revit Object Unique Ids Negative element ids and property drop-down... Read more →

Revit 2014 SDK and Visual Debugging Tools

Two hot topics for today, especially the first: Updated Revit 2014 SDK Visual debugging tools Updated Revit 2014 SDK An updated Revit 2014 SDK is live on the ADN Open Revit developer page now: www.autodesk.com/developrevit This version includes RevitLookup and the AddInManager! Visual Debugging Tools Rudolf Honke of Mensch und Maschine acadGraph GmbH discovered a glitch in the definition of the room solids in one of the standard sample RVT project files. Rudi says: When testing VRML exporter with Revit... Read more →

IFC GUID Generation and Uniqueness

We looked at IFC GUIDs a couple of times already, e.g. to discuss the relationship between UniqueId, DWF and IFC GUID, the ExportUtils.GetExportId method, and the IFC GUID representation algorithm. The Revit 2012 API introduced the ExporterIFCUtils class for customizing IFC export, and the IFC exporter was released as open source. In Revit 2013, the IFC export implementation switched to a more generic toolkit, many of the APIs introduced in Revit 2012 were removed and replaced, and new interfaces introduced... Read more →

Remove DWF Links

I spent this weekend in Chamonix with my brother Nick. We did one day of rock climbing in the valley at Les Gaillants and Servoz doing Surbac a' Bras, 6a+, and one day of skiing with Chris down the Vallee Blanche, Mer de Glace and Montenvers from the Telepherique de l'Aiguille du Midi. Our route from the telepherique actually joins the Vallee Blanche via the steep looking descent at the extreme right of this picture, with a sharp ridge crossing... Read more →

ImportExport Update

I mentioned some features of the ImportExport SDK sample in previous posts, e.g. on porting it from C# to VB, setting the DWG export filename, modifying the DWF export filename, and exporting a 3D view to 2D DWF. Now Kurt Schrempp ran into a little problem with this sample. He says: I solved my problem. Here is the issue: When you try to export as DWG, it requires and gives you options to define the layer mapping. If you don't... Read more →

Export 3D View to 2D DWF

By the time you read this, I will already be away on my holiday in Andalusia. Still, I thought I could drop off this last post before I leave. We looked at various aspects of DWF export in the past, such as the unique id assigned to elements, the view definition, and the export filenames used. Here is another quick question on DWF export handled by Saikat Bhattacharya that may be of general interest: Question: Is it possible to use... Read more →

Modify the DWF Export Filename

Here is another case handled by Joe Ye regarding the DWF output filename generated by the ImportExport Revit SDK sample. We already presented another related case of his regarding the DWG export filename. Question: This problem is similar to the ViewPrinter problem where the program automatically names the output file. Please tell me how I can trap the naming of DWF output file so I can either send it to a temp folder or rename it by moving to a... Read more →

DWG Export Filename

Here is a question handled by Joe Ye that I thought might be of general interest. It makes use of the Revit SDK sample ImportExport converted to VB.NET. We mentioned the issue of converting Revit SDK samples from C# to VB in one post, and Adam Nagy later presented a more complete port. Question: I am making an application to export Revit views to DWG files. I used the ImportExport sample converted to VB.NET as a basis. I am having... Read more →

DWG and DWF Family Creation

Here is another question on family creation, this time not regarding parameters, but the geometrical content and reuse of existing geometry. Revit is a strongly parametric system, and the Revit family management obviously also. However, if one happens to have important predefined static geometry for certain components, that can be reused as well. It is of course a shame to be using static, non-parametric geometry in an environment with such powerful support for parameterisation. In some cases, however, reusing pre-existing... Read more →

Imports in Families

I will have left on vacation once again by the time this is posted. In case you wonder why I am on vacation so much, the trip to Italy in March and the wonderful experiences I had there were actually to use up last year's contingent. Now I am getting started on this years', going off on a climbing and driving trip to southern France with my two sons Christopher and Cornelius, especially to the Provence and Avignon to visit... Read more →

DWF View Definition

Here is a question related to the 3D views in Revit, i.e. standard, top, left, bottom, etc. and user created, and the corresponding ones in a DWF file. The issue concerns the relationship between the internal Revit coordinate system and the exported coordinates in DWF. For instance, how to create a 3D DWF with a custom view using the coordinates of the 3D view defined in Revit. In a DWF file, the view is determined by Camera position Target toward... Read more →

UniqueId, DWF and IFC GUID

One frequent question from developers has been on how to correlate the GUIDs or globally unique identifiers used when exporting models to DWF and IFC from Revit with the element ids and unique ids used internally in the Revit model. GUID and UniqueId A GUID is a 16-byte, i.e. 128 bit number. It is commonly split up into several fields of varying lengths and written in groups of 8-4-4-4-12 hexadecimal characters, i.e. 32 characters to represent the 16 bytes or... Read more →