The Building Coder

Tools for Extensible Storage and OAuth Auth0

Revit API tools for extensible storage and OAuth Auth0, notes on AI news, a Mac feature and electrical energy storage – SchemaMigrations extensible storage lib – OpenAI ChatGPT deep research – OAuth Auth0 in a Revit add-in – Docling markdown generator – MacOS copy paste sans formatting – DIY open source redox flow battery... Read more →

Pyramid Builder, CommandLoader, et al

Pyramid Builder, CommandLoader, and more – Dynamic load, compile and run code – DirectShape pyramids – Modify level element X and Y extents – How to filter for subsets of elements – Switch document display units – Material tags displaying '?' – Sublime Text... Read more →

Exploring ARM, ChatGPT, Nairobi and the TSP

I am still in Nairobi, Kenya, getting to know the lay of the land and team here, as well as setting up my new computer; meanwhile, OpenAI ChatGPT is making global waves and first explorative steps are being made to use it with the Revit API – Outings in Nairobi – ChatGPT in Kiswahili – for music and poetry mimicry – for Revit API – for Revit interaction – teaching about the birds and the bees – limitations and improvement – acrostic poem – VS2022 on MacBook Pro M1 with Parallels – Chasing the travelling salesman... Read more →

APS, Nairobi and NetTopologySuite

I am writing this in Nairobi, Kenya, getting to know the team here; also, the new APS landing page just went live, and Benoit points out a useful geometric modelling library to help power your Revit add-in – DAS team in Nairobi, Kenya – NetTopologySuite in Revit add-ins – New APS landing page – You can create RVT using APS... Read more →

BIM360 Links and Programming Add-Ins

An important solution to fix a problem loading BIM 360 links and lots of advice on programming Revit add-ins in general – New Revit material appearance asset – BIM 360 links not found solution – AppStore guidelines for Revit add-in – Coding Revit add-ins the e-verse way – VS wizard template location... Read more →

DLL as Resource and Multi-Version Add-Ins

Lots of options to implement multi-version add-ins and examples showing how to store DLL dependencies in your add-in resources – Migration assistant rocks – ExportCncFab 2022 – Multi-version Revit add-in – Deploying a DLL file as a resource... Read more →

Localised Forge Intros and Apply Code Changes

Today, I highlight our new local language Forge classes and the renewed ability to easily edit and continue while debugging a Revit add-in – Non-mobile after computer crash – Local language Forge classes – Apply code changes debugging Revit add-in... Read more →

Revit Roadmap, API and DA4R Survey

Opportunities to provide feedback on the Revit product, the Revit API and the Forge Design Automation API for Revit – Revit public roadmap update – Revit and DA4R API survey 2021 – MacOS Big Sur upgrade – The Economist on ransomware and cybersecurity... Read more →

DA4R Cannot Save Directly to Cloud

Today, let's address a resurfacing question in the Forge Design Automation for Revit or DA4R context – DA4R cannot save RVT as a cloud model – Every program launch is logged... Read more →

New PC, KLH Snoop, Annotations and Vertex Handling

I have been very busy and motivated indeed setting up a new computer this week. Nonetheless, I was able to keep going full steam with Revit API related issues as well – Setting up a new MacBook – KLH Engineers RevitDeveloperTools snooping tool – Pulling text from annotation tags – Vertex handling – The true meaning of pizza... Read more →

BIM365 Getting Started, Materials API, CPU Voltage

I am on vacation right now, enjoying splendid weather camping on the coast of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, here are a few items that cropped up in the past few days – Getting started and programming buttons with Revit API – Links to API to modify visual appearance of materials – Improving performance by optimising CPU voltage... Read more →

Access BIM360 Cloud Links, Thumbnail and Dynamo

This post is somewhat overdue and hence rather full of various topics, mainly due to my struggles with my MacBook slowing to an unbearable crawl in the heat last week – Accessing BIM360 cloud links – Retrieve RVT preview thumbnail image with Python – Paolo's Dynamo primer and slide deck compendium – Slow MacBook with kernel_task using several 100% CPU – Failings of the political establishment... Read more →

TextNote Rotation, DevCon, TensorFlow and Keras

The Forge DevCon developer conference has been happily united with Autodesk University, text note rotation is easy, and I continued my deep learning exploration for implementing a Revit API question answering system – Forge DevCon at AU – Setting TextNote rotation – TensorFlow and Keras – Updating restricted Python packages – Rules of machine learning... Read more →

My Mac Died and I am Alive in Greece

I had a couple of eventful days – My Mac crashed – Setting up the new Mac – Recompiling the samples connecting BIM and cloud – Travel to Athens – Athens Forge Meetup – Athens Forge Workshop... Read more →

Live Revit Element Rendering in Remote WebGL Viewer

Today, I'll implement live real-time export of 3D geometry from a Revit add-in to a web-hosted WebGL viewer. This is an enhancement to the initial version exporting 3D element geometry to a WebGL viewer, which just generated data that I copied and pasted to hard-code it into the NodeWebGL viewer as a proof of concept. Meanwhile, I enhanced the WebGL viewer in various ways to prepare it for this real-time live connection, mainly by adding a REST API and support... Read more →

View and Data API Sample in Swift and Mac OS Upgrade

As you know, we have a pretty impressive number of samples demonstrating the use of the View and Data API web services. We are currently reviewing them all to ensure their documentation is reliable and consistent. I picked Adam Nagy's workflow sample written in Swift to review. That required a look at the Swift programming language itself and a system upgrade before I could start with the review itself. Before getting to that, let me also mention the upcoming 3D... Read more →

Displaying Progress Bar and Generating Animated GIF

A frequent request for Revit add-ins performing time-consuming tasks is to display a progress bar. My own progress bar implementation is provided by the ADN MEP sample application AdnRme, originally dating way back to 2009 and earlier still. Now Limin He of FM:Systems encountered and resolved an issue with his progress bar in VB.NET, raising the following comment on the topic of the new exceptions raised by multithreading in Revit 2015: Question: We came across the same issue described above... Read more →

Robot Structural Analysis and Mac App Tabbing

Let's look at these two little issues today: Adapting Robot Structural Analysis Tabbing between applications on Mac Adapting Robot Structural Analysis Question: I installed the Revit SDK and am looking at customising Revit Structure and Robot for my needs. I could only find tutorials for examples of API, but I can't find any information about the database code. I would like to enhance the implementation based on Eurocode for Brazil. How can I open and create a new database, like... Read more →

Nightingale M3U and Denormalized Filename Characters

Here is a post addressing a Mac denormalized filename character issue, music players on Mac and Python file manipulation, so nothing to do with the Revit API. It appears that Songbird is dead, Nightingale is its successor, and nothing much else is happening on that front, neither now nor ever. I guess Nightingale will die a natural death too one of these days, but I am still using it so far anyway. Just like Songbird, Nightingale does not provide any... Read more →

Move Duct Join Add-In with Video and GitHub Support

I am always happy to take a look at a real MEP issue, so this case caught my eye and prompted me to sit down and do some actual coding again for a change: Question: How can I programmatically move the join of two ducts, effectively changing their end points? I do not want to delete and re-enter them because they will normally be connected at the other end as well. Answer: In general, when working on programmatic manipulation of... Read more →

The Building Coder Samples on GitHub

After several prompts from various quarters, I finally got around to publishing The Building Coder samples on GitHub. To access them from there, you can either open the repository or grab the code through the direct zip file download. As discussed below in the section on branching and tagging, these links refer to the master branch. For a specific version of the samples, e.g. from today, please see below. Another important aspect that I discovered in the process and always... Read more →

Python Mac Pasteboard Access

I recently discussed the Google prettify tool that I started using to display colour-coded JavaScript source code in HTML. As I mentioned there, it does a good job for all languages I looked at except C# and VB .NET, where I prefer the colour coding generated by Visual Studio, since that highlights class names defined in referenced .NET assemblies as well as the built-in .NET ones. To retrieve the Visual Studio colour coding and insert it into my HTML page,... Read more →

Removing Unused Mac Architectures, Languages and Files

Nature abhors vacuum, and every disk fills up. This Mac has a 500 GB SSD, which is great, but gradually getting cramped. Looking around for some disk space management tools, I also happened to stumble across Monolingual and made immediate and effective spontaneous use of it. Mac programs come with bundled resources for multiple PC architectures and languages. Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary resources in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space. It does exactly what... Read more →

Basic File Info and RVT File Version

I presented an initial solution in Python for determining the version of an RVT file on disk from outside Revit making use of its OLE document Structured Storage format back in 2008. David Echols later shared a more full-fledged C# Revit OLE Storage viewer listing more information and displaying the preview image. Since then, the Revit API added support for reading basic RVT file info through the BasicFileInfo class. Victor Chekalin now presents another C# console application showing how some... 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 →

Moving to the Mac

I have been quiet for a whole week now, busy setting up my Mac, learning new functionality, techniques, keyboard shortcuts, editors, you name it. Under Windows, I was already using quite a number of batch files and command line Unix-style tools, so I am very happy to have a real Unix shell to play with now. On the other hand, each batch file needs some fixes applied to convert it to a shell script, and every keystroke needs some additional... Read more →