The Building Coder

Icon Access and Reference Plane in Family Instance

Today I highlight two of Fair59's numerous solutions in the Revit API forum, and also mention a joke I picked up in a Swedish cartoon – Fadaesen on racism versus realism – Retrieving a reference plane location in a family instance – Accessing the Revit ribbon icons... Read more →

Magic Number, Magic Automation and Magic Season

Time to wind down for the year... Here are some last things to share before signing off – Magic number for schedule instance bounding box margin – Using PostCommand with the Windows Automation API – Programmer jokes – Season's greetings... Read more →

Cool Forge Demos and Roomedit Caveat

Getting ready to present an overview of Forge and talk about connecting the desktop and the cloud at the RTC Revit Technology Conference Europe and the ISEPBIM Forge and BIM workshops at ISEP, the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Jim Quanci very kindly supplied an updated list of really cool demo sites, plus a word of warning: – Cool Forge demos – Caveat on connecting desktop and cloud... Read more →

Swami Ma Anand Mazaak Buddhoo

My Vipassana meditation retreatis nearing its end... I have had a wonderful time with peace, quiet, introspection... I am very glad to already now announce one radical decision I have taken: I am being ordinated as a monk! The blog format will be modified to include some spiritual messages, silent passages for meditation, and chimes. The new name will be announced next week... Read more →

Pi Day, Meeting, Ski Tour, Revit Server Bar Separator

You may be surprised to hear that today is Pi Day :-) – as well as the birthday of my S.O.S. or significant other's son. I had an exciting week with the ADN team meeting in London followed by a ski tour during the weekend. To round this off, I'll also tuck in one little Revit API item here for you – Happy Pi Day and Dan's birthday – EMEA ADN team meeting in London – Ski tours in the Alvier group – Revit Server model path requires bar separator... Read more →

External Services

It's been a while since I talked about External Services. The External Services framework was initially introduced and used sparingly in the Revit 2013 MEP API. In Revit 2014, the IFC export was moved to an external service and I presented the user-defined MEP calculation sample, later moved to GitHub. The framework for handling referenced file resources is also implemented as an external service. The motivation to continue this discussion now was given by Arnošt Löbel's class SD10752 on Revit External Services at Autodesk University 2015 in Las Vegas... Read more →

PickPoint with WPF and No Threads Attached

Here is another contribution from Saied Zarrinmehr, of the BIM-SIM Research Group at the Texas A&M University, on the thread safety of the Selection.PickPoint method in Revit 2014 and 2015, resulting in a sample testing different methods for hiding and unhiding a WPF window. I trust they are interesting and useful for people working with Revit 2016 as well. Before getting to that, Calvin and Hobbes anniversary... Read more →

Kids@Work and AEC Technology Symposium Videos

I am busy preparing my presentations for Autodesk University. In spite of that, I spent the day yesterday taking my SON (significant other's nephew :-) to the Kids at Work event in the Autodesk Neuchâtel offices – AEC Technology Symposium Videos... Read more →

WorksharingUtils

Rudolf 'Revitalizer' Honke frequently requested better documentation of the Revit API `*Utils` classes, e.g., when he pointed out the handy utility classes back in 2013. This is still an interesting and somewhat poorly documented area in the Revit API, as we can see from the discussion below – WorksharingUtils and the WorksharingTooltipInfo class – Ten interesting C# features – A new acronym – TL;DR... Read more →

Happy Halloween!

The Revit Technology Conference RTC Europe in Budapest is just wrapping up. Happy Halloween! Read more →

Markdown, Fusion Accelerator $$$, Revisions and Bulk Upgrade

Today, I discuss my new Markdown blog post format, Fusion 360, the Fusion accelerator and a couple of Revit issues: Using the Markdown blog post format; Fusion 360; Fusion 360 for game artists; Fusion 360 accelerator; The Revit Revision API; Running a background bulk upgrade batch, Banksy's Dismaland bemusement park... Read more →

Back from Easter Holidays and Various Revit API Issues

I hope you had a wonderful time over Easter. I returned from my team meeting and subsequent brief holiday in the snow and am confronted with a long list of unanswered Revit API discussion forum issues. I answered a dozen and present a summary of a few of the most interesting ones: Determining the distance between floor and bottom of a beam Consecutive ordering of TopographySurface boundary points Extracting unique building element geometry vertices Retrieving all visible elements Before I... Read more →

Revit Server Thumbnail Requires Redistributable

Here is a quick answer to a simple Revit Server question to close for this week: Question: My application retrieves thumbnails of models stored on Revit Server 2014 via REST calls using the following code: WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create( "http://" + "/RevitServerAdminRESTService2014" + "/AdminRESTService.svc/" + "|demorevitserver_ab.rvt/thumbnail" + "?width=200&height=200" ); request.Method = "GET"; request.Headers.Add( "User-Name", "d5783faa-3548-4e6e-be9a-aeca05c59352" ); request.Headers.Add( "User-Machine-Name", "MyComputerXyz" ); request.Headers.Add( "Operation-GUID", Guid.NewGuid().ToString() ); // Next line fails // The remote server returned an error: // (500) Internal Server Error.... 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 →

ADN Revit 2015 API Training Material

The ADN Revit API Training Material available on GitHub from the RevitTrainingMaterial repository has now been updated for the Revit 2015 API. Here is a direct link to download it as a zip archive. The Revit 2014 version is still available as release 2014.0.0.0, and the Revit 2015 version – obviously – as release 2015.0.0.0. Tech Summit Preview Recording In case you are interested in listening to what I plan to say about my enhanced cloud-based round-trip simplified 2D BIM... Read more →

Automating Large Scale Waste Recycling and Sustainability

Today we take a forward look at new solutions for the seemingly unrelated issues of waste recycling and sustainability, using rail-mounted robots and 3D printing technology in combination with novel materials: Sustainability 3D Printing Robots on Rails Recycling Waste into Insulation and Curtain Walls Autodesk Sustainability Workshop Sustainability As you know, Autodesk is leading the way in sustainable design, was commended for its tremendous leadership in corporate sustainability metrics, and BIM is one of the main tools enabling the detailed... Read more →

More on Revit API Aspects and Features

Yesterday, I mentioned a couple of Revit API aspects and features that triggered follow-up comments. Seeing as the topic appears to be of general interest, let's pick them up and continue this. I'll add a few other little titbits first, as well, though, related to meat, BIM, and the Revit API, in that order: Help escape the Meatrix Autodesk BIM interoperability landing page BIM acronyms and dictionary Creating non-rectangular openings in walls Reactions on the Revit API abomination Help Escape... Read more →

Setting the View Display Background

Here is an exploration of various attempts to ensure that the view background is always white, regardless of all user settings like inverted background etc. Before getting to that, I have to share an important discovery for me and my Tammik namesakes by my sister Helene, who recently consulted an Estonian translator. My last name is Estonian and comes from 'tamm', meaning 'oak'. Tammik is a small group of oaks, or oak grove, a common North European name, cf. Eklund... Read more →

Driving CNC Fabrication and Shared Parameters

The topic of CNC fabrication of Revit BIM elements is continuing to grow in popularity. As you already know, I published the ExportWallboard add-in to automatically isolate and export wall parts individually to DXF for CNC fabrication, then enhanced, renamed and published it on GitHub as ExportCncFab for William Spier's Autodesk University class on Design to Fabrication. Those discussions were explicitly related to CNC fabrication up front. Numerous other topics here are also useful in that context. I was unable... Read more →

Happy Birthday, Dear Building Coder!

This is the thousandth and fourth post on The Building Coder, and today is its fifth birthday, a good double reason for celebration. The first post ever was a warm welcome on August 22, 2008. Here is a nice new and very professional Building Coder flash screen created by my son Christopher, also known as the composer Allerdings, to celebrate the occasion: Thank you, Christopher! I love you. A better reason still is that we hear how important this resource... Read more →

ADN Mesh Data Custom Exporter to JSON

I mentioned my idea of implementing a custom exporter to JSON to drive Philippe Leefsma's online 3D WebGL viewer. Well, here it is. Muttenhorn Before getting to that, though, let me briefly mention that I went on a nice mountain with my friend Martin last Saturday, over the Gross Muttenhorn on the south side of the Furka pass. A glacier named Muttgletscher lies over its north-western flanks, and we crossed that on our ascent up to the west ridge. From... Read more →

Dynamically Hide and Display a Ribbon Panel

Here is a quick little question on dynamically toggling the display of a custom ribbon panel, e.g. depending on the currently activated Revit disciplines. First, however, let me share this nice and wise little quote regarding the current weather situation and actually life and happiness in general from the German humourist Karl Valentin (1882-1948): I am happy if it rains – because if I am unhappy, it still goes on raining (Ich freue mich, wenn es regnet – denn wenn... Read more →

Python and Ruby Scripting Resources and the Sharp Glyph

Do you know very little about scripting and want to get started? Here are some recommendations on getting started with Python and Ruby from Steven Mycynek of the Revit API development team and Saikat Bhattacharya of Autodesk Consulting. I am writing this from the most wonderful organic restaurant ever, life alive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on my way to the Boston airport to fly back home. Steven's Recommendations Ruby and Python are the two main scripting languages Revit is working with.... Read more →

Getting Started with the Revit API

I am regularly forced to return to this topic, to provide a useful starting point for beginners. The amount of available material is getting huge, and some help is required deciding where to start exploring the Revit API. The most important thing to be aware of is the Revit Developer Center. Start there by looking at the three DevTV video introductions and then work through the My First Revit Plug-in tutorial. In these tutorials, you are shown how to locate,... Read more →

The Revit 2014 Pre-release API and SDK

Below, we look at how ADN members can obtain the Revit 2014 pre-release SDK, address migration issues, and one or two interesting new aspects of the API. First however, a few words on yesterdays post touting the idea of a cloud-based restaurant seating arrangement and cleaning application. As you probably noticed, the main new ideas I discussed there were in honour of April fool's Day. Many of my colleagues joined in with other similar hoax blog posts. Stephen Preston presents... Read more →

Cloud-Based Restaurant Seating and Cleaning

I hope you had a successful Easter egg hunt. As you probably noticed, I have lately been focusing on the research and implementation of my cloud-based round-trip 2D Revit model editing project for the upcoming Autodesk internal tech summit in June as much as my day-to-day tasks will allow. Current Project Overview To recap, the basic idea is simple: implement an example of round-trip minimal simple editing of a 2D rendering of a Revit model on any mobile device with... Read more →

Rename View by Matching Elevation Tag with Room

Today is the last morning meeting with my European DevTech colleagues here in Brittany, and time to travel back to Switzerland. Before leaving, here is a useful real-world productivity tool by Trevor Taylor of ZGF, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects LLP, with his own description of the task and its solution: The task I want to address is to match interior elevation tags with the rooms they fall inside. This is used to track back and rename the corresponding views. Naming... Read more →

MP3 Manipulation Using Python, Mutagen and Ffmpeg

Today is an education day, and I am taking another look at displaying a 2D view of a Revit model on mobile devices using SVG. I started off doing so quite a while back, implementing a room polygon and furniture picker in SVG. That implementation displays a read-only view of the model, useful for picking and identifying elements, e.g. for querying or adding metadata to them. Today I plan to go one step further, though, and enable translation and rotation... Read more →

Happy Bhai Dooj!

Happy Bhai Dooj to you! This greeting comes from my colleague Sandeep Kumar in Bangalore, who explains: Bhai Dooj is a festival of prayers from sister to brother, brother's protection for her sister. May we all celebrate this Bhai Dooj with even more love and protection for our sisters and brothers. Best wishes on this Bhai Dooj. Thus fortified, let us turn to a Revit API issue, based on this excerpt from a useful little chat I had yesterday that... Read more →

Roll Your Own Toggle Button

Today I took my first stab at creating, compiling and debugging a new Revit add-in on the Mac. I cannot run Revit or Visual Studio natively on the Mac, of course, so those have to remain in Windows, hosted by the Parallels environment on the Mac. I had to fiddle around quite a bit with the Parallels synchronisation, which seems to be breaking more things than it fixes, for me at least. I managed in the end in spite of... Read more →

Ensure WPF Add-in Remains in Foreground

Autumn arrived and passed in a flash. The woods are beautifully coloured, and, unusually, the first snow is already lying on the surrounding hills. Here are some items of interest from cases we looked at last week: Ensure WPF add-in remains in foreground Retrieve all model lines Set linked file visibility Access linked file elements and data Visual Studio 2012 Model Editor Supports OBJ and FBX Sie Mögen Sich Ensure WPF Add-in Remains in Foreground Here is an issue concerning... Read more →