The Building Coder

Naughty Updaters, DIY Add-In Manifest, GD, AI, etc.

Lots of exciting discussion going on in the Revit API discussion forum and elsewhere – No redemption for naughty updaters – DIY Add-in manifest – Generative design in C# – AI identifies and classifies BIM elements in 2D sketch... Read more →

Autorouting and Reference for CreatePipeConnector

Today we pick up two recent MEP related discussions, on creating a new pipe connector for a hydraulic fitting family and on automatic pipe system routing, and a couple of other odd items – The names they are a-changin – Getting a ReferencePlane for CreatePipeConnector – Auto-routing a pipe system between plumbing fixtures – Handling dialogue and failure messages – Retrieving a geometry reference... Read more →

Swallowing StairsAutomation Warnings

One important step to take before trying to run your Revit API code fully automated and unattended is to ensure that it does not create or modify UI in any way. For example, you must ensure that it does not cause Revit to display any warnings. This can be achieved with a warning swallower. Let's implement one for the StairsAutomation SDK sample... Read more →

Creating a Warning Using the Failure API

The Failure API enables both failure definition and handling capabilities – The ability to define and post failures from within API code when a user-visible problem has occurred – The ability to respond to failures posted by Revit and by API code through code in your application This also enables the creation of a modeless warning message to the user... Read more →

Gathering and Returning Failure Information

Is there a way to return failure information to your main command when creating a transaction? My program does some error logging and creates an error report at the end, and I'd like to include some information from specific types of Revit failures (i.e., include if multiple instances were created in the same place). Yes, you can use the PreprocessFailures method argument failuresAccessor to review and store failure message information for later use... Read more →

Warning Swallower, Roomedit3d Viewer Extension

I continue my work on the roomedit3dv3 sample connecting the desktop with the cloud by enabling a real-time round-trip modification of the BIM via the Forge viewer, mention a neat solution enabling a Revit add-in to swallowing warning messages, and point out the Forge webinar session on the Forge Viewer later today – Warning swallower – Roomedit3dv3 transform viewer extension – Forge webinar series... Read more →

How to Fail, Still Win Big and Handle Duplicate Types

Let's start this week with a couple of interesting topics that have been hanging around a while up, one Revit API related and not: How to fail at almost everything and still win big Handling duplicate types when copying elements How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big I received a very nice present from my colleague Steve Mycynek, Principal Engineer of the Revit API development team, at the Autodesk Technical Summit in Toronto: How to Fail at... Read more →

On Handling Warnings and Failures

Many aspects of detecting and handling dialogues and failures have been discussed in the past. Let's look at this area again, based on two recent questions, a basic and an advanced one, and also mention some Revit 2015 enhancements to the Revit Developer Centre: Programmatic handling of warning messages Resolving failures using the Failure API Revit 2015 enhancements to the Revit developer centre Programmatic Handling of Warning Messages Question: Is it possible with the Revit MEP 2011 API to handle... Read more →

Skip Invalid Element Generation Using Failure API

We already took a couple of looks at the Failure API in the past, e.g.: Failure API Failure API Take Two Failure Rollback Here is a slightly more convoluted situation that motivates revisiting the topic from a new angle, raised and solved by Stephen Faust of Revolution Design, Inc. together with Arnošt Löbel of the Revit API development team, who invested significant time and research in the issue: Question: I am generating some floor objects from rooms in a project.... Read more →

Handle Your Own Exceptions

I was under the impression that it should be hard for an add-in to crash Revit. Therefore, it was a surprise yesterday to receive an add-in displaying a form and instructions to reliably cause Revit to terminate unexpectedly with just two or three clicks. The reason is simple, however, as we shall see below, and underlines once again how hard it is to properly implement and handle any modeless activity within a Revit add-in. Important aspects were discussed in the... Read more →

Extrusion Analyser and Plan View Boundaries

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. I did not yet display the code driving the extrusion analyser, though, or discuss my experiences with that. Those are the topics of today's post: Using the... Read more →

Failure Rollback

I am in full blast preparing and updating material for the Revit API training in Munich starting the day after tomorrow, as well as the upcoming AEC DevCamp conference and another event that I have not even mentioned here yet: Revit 2013 API Webcast We will be holding a webcast on the Revit 2013 API on May 17, Ascension Day (register). A list of all the ADN DevTech training opportunities is provided by the Training Course Schedule, entering "Revit API"... Read more →

Determine Revit Demo Mode

Here is yet another interesting example of an apparent gap in the Revit API that can be easily filled using a little workaround. We have seen numerous examples of performing a certain operation within a temporary transaction that is then rolled back to cancel it, such as to determine gross material quantities for an element with openings, a host reference and, more generally, all object relationships. Here is an example of using a related but different approach: the trick consists... Read more →

The Performance Adviser API

Unbelievable as it may seem, there are still a number of new areas of functionality added in the Revit 2012 API that we have not even got around to covering here yet at all. One of these is the performance adviser. Here is an article on that by my colleague Saikat Bhattacharya from the ADN AEC newsletter. The Performance Adviser API added in Revit 2012 allows developers to execute a set of built-in or custom rules against a given model,... Read more →

Lock the Model, e.g. Prevent Deletion

I recently discussed two common and interesting issues with developers which ended up being easily resolved: Locking the state of certain programmatically generated parts of the model to prevent the user from messing them up. Simpler still, prevent deletion of certain elements. Both of these issues can be efficiently addressed using the Failure API. It allows us to Define our own failure conditions. Post pre-defined or custom failures. Handle failures, e.g. suppress unwanted messages or completely replace the standard failure... Read more →

Failure API Take Two

Before I get into today's topic, let me lament a bit about my Wednesday morning. Travel Woes I am flying to Las Vegas today in order to have time for last-minute AU preparations and acclimatise properly there. For reasons unknown to me, my travel agent (who shall remain unnamed here in public) booked me a flight leaving at seven in the morning from Switzerland to London, and a continuation from London to Las Vegas with an eight hour wait in... Read more →

Suppress Unwanted Dialogue

I am posting this in advance from Pattaya before leaving laptop-less for Cambodia, so that you have a little something for the duration of my absence. Before I left on vacation, we had several queries on suppressing unwanted dialogues, and we also looked at this issue in some depth discussing editing elements inside groups. Here are some further examples of the questions and solutions we found: Question: I am importing a DWG containing AutoCAD solids into a Revit document. The... Read more →