The Building Coder

Getting Started Once Again

Welcoming my new colleague Carol leads to a renewed look at getting started – Access permission to load my first add-in – My first Revit plug-in todo – Books on Python for Revit Dynamo – pyRevit saves insane amounts of time – Newtonsoft Json.dll version conflict – Lost in the World by Steve Cutts... Read more →

Installer Asset, FormIt and Quaternions

Notes on FormIt and its JavaScript API, the new automatically generated RevitLookup MSI installer asset, transformations and quaternions – FormIt API and geographical context – RevitLookup MSI installer asset – Transform and quaternions... Read more →

RevitLookup Search by Element and Unique Id

Александр Пекшев aka Modis @Pekshev implemented another useful RevitLookup enhancement to search and snoop elements by element id or unique id – Search and snoop by element id or unique id – File changes – The built-in Select by Id command, Zoom To and StringSearch – RevitLookup update... Read more →

My First Revit Plugin Enhancements

Today, let's return to the recurring topic of getting started with the Revit API, its SDK samples, and programming in general – My First Revit Plugin enhancements – Getting started with web programming – FreeCodeCamp – ModelessForm_ExternalEvent initialisation... Read more →

BIM 360 Docs, Add-In Folders, Stallman and Abc

I am going to the University of Bern this afternoon to listen to Richard Stallman speak For A Free Digital Society. Here are some other recent and not-so-recent topics – BIM 360 Docs – Richard Stallman in Switzerland – Is the abc conjecture proven? – Add-In Folders – BIM 360 Docs is the new Autodesk platform for construction document management. It provides web services to ensure that the entire project team is always building from the correct version of documents, plans, and models... Read more →

All Model Text, StringSearch 2016 and New Jobs

I migrated another one of my samples to Revit 2016: StringSearch. That was prompted by a question on extracting all visible text from the Revit model that I will take a closer look at below – ADN Internship and Other Jobs – Extracting all Visible Text from the Revit Model – StringSearch for Revit 2016... Read more →

Multi-Version Add-in

This is blog post number 800, in case you are interested. I'll celebrate that fact by going out for a run in the woods after posting. As we all saw when migrating add-ins from Revit 2012 to Revit 2013, the new version requires an add-in to be compiled using the .NET framework version 4.0. In spite of this, a Revit 2012 add-in can still be loaded into Revit 2013. I created a sample to prove this. Not only can a... Read more →

Retrieve Embedded Resource Image

I had my first haircut since January this weekend :-) The reason I had such a long break from that task is that I shaved my head completely in January. I had been thinking of doing that sometime in my life ever since I was a teenager, but I was always way too scared to actually put it into practice. In the meantime, three of my four kids already showed me how easy it is, and they all looked good,... Read more →

Level Generator ADN Plugin of the Month

Another ADN Plugin of the Month for Revit has been published on Autodesk Labs: the February ADN Plugin of the Month is the Level Generator by my Chinese colleague Joe Ye. It generates multiple adjacent levels with one single command. Inside Revit, go to Add-ins > External Tools > Level Generator to start the command. The Level Generator dialogue appears: Existing levels are listed in the table with their Index and Elevation in gray colour and are not editable. To... Read more →

My First Revit Plug-in in VB

Back in May, we published the wonderful new Revit API training tool, the self-paced My First Revit Plug-in guide, originally based on the C# programming language. Based on popular demand, we have now added new VB.NET samples. So regardless whether you are new to this training or have already gone through it once with the C# code, now is your chance to choose the language you prefer, C# or VB.Net, at www.autodesk.com/myfirstrevitplugin. The explanations in the lessons are still written... Read more →

Revit Add-in File Load Exception

Back from my vacation in Andalusia, and now moving full speed ahead towards Autodesk University, my lecture and hands-on lab on the Revit extensible storage API and all the other exciting goodies there. Meanwhile, here is one little issue that immediately arose with the Revit String Search utility published last week: Probably the most common problem that people keep running into with add-ins on Windows Vista, both in Revit and other environments, is the need to unblock the zip file.... Read more →

String Search ADN Plugin of the Month

Best regards from Andalusia! Here is just a short note to point out that my first ADN Plugin of the Month has been published on Autodesk Labs: the November ADN Plugin of the Month is the Revit String Search. Look at the developer notes at the end for reasons why you should take a look at this :) Description Search Revit project elements and their parameter values for a given string value. Standard string search options can be specified to... Read more →

TransTips ADN Plugin of the Month

Another ADN Plugin of the Month has been released, this time for all four products AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit and 3ds Max: The September ADN Plugin of the Month on Autodesk Labs is the TransTips tooltip translation utility that we already discussed here and of which Kean published a preview. In brief, TransTips uses a web service to translate tooltips into one of 36 languages on the fly. While sometimes imperfect, automatic translations can make the products usable when no appropriate... Read more →

Translate Revit Tooltips

Kean Walmsley recently started exploring the exciting and useful idea of hooking up machine translation to AutoCAD, initially to auto-translate tooltips. As Kean points out, you can get all AutoCAD tooltips translated into one of 35 different languages, which is a great help for people learning or using the product in regions for which we don't currently localize. Here's a tooltip in Arabic, for instance: Kean quickly followed up the original proof of concept with an improved implementation including caching... Read more →

Python Shell in Revit and Vasari

Finally! I was always so excited about Daren Thomas' RevitPythonShell which I pointed to now and then in the past. Now Zach Kron of buildz and Nathan Miller picked up this theme again and show how to install and run RevitPythonShell using IronPython in Vasari: Too good to miss! Read more →

VendorId, DevTV, and My First Plugin

Here is a simple issue from a discussion with Stephen LeCompte of FKP Architects, Inc. that several other people people also recently ran into: Question: I followed the steps provided in 'DevTV: Introduction to Revit 2011 Programming - Part I' and incorporated them in my Revit Architecture 2012 64-bit version, but there is a problem. When I start up Revit 2012 it displays the following error message saying 'Failed to initialize the add-in "RevitNETAddin3.addin" because the add-in registration is missing... Read more →

File Upgrader Plugin of the Month

The third Revit Plugin of the Month has been released, after Adam Nagy's Room Renumbering and Martin Schmid's ASHRAE Viewer: the File Upgrader for Revit by Saikat Bhattacharya. As always, the new ADN Plugin of the Month can be downloaded from the Autodesk Labs ADN Plugins page. The File Upgrader can be used to batch upgrade previous versions of Revit files to the Revit 2012 format. It can upgrade both project files and family content: The download includes a compiled... Read more →

My First Revit Plug-in

My colleagues Joe Ye and Saikat Bhattacharya of the ADN DevTech team put together a wonderful new training tool, in a project led by Kristine Middlemiss and with strong support by Mikako Harada and Kean Walmsley, to create self-paced 'My First Plug-in' guides introducing power users with no prior programming experience to the APIs (Application Programming Interface) of various Autodesk products. Luckily for us Revit aficionados, the very first of these guides is the Revit one, so let me proudly... Read more →

ASHRAE Viewer Plugin of the Month

We recently published our first ever Revit plugin of the month, for March, Adam's Room Renumbering add-in. Now the second one is already available on Autodesk Labs as well, for April, an ASHRAE Viewer for Revit MEP by Martin Schmid of Autodesk's AEC Industry Success team: The download includes ready compiled versions for both Revit 2011 and 2012, a complete user manual, and full source code, so you can use it as is, tweak it for your specific needs, or... Read more →

Room Renumbering Plugin of the Month

Our latest Plugin of the Month has been released on Autodesk Labs: RoomRenumbering for Revit. For the first time ever, this month's plugin is a Revit add-in, a room renumbering application by Adam Nagy. It includes source code and full documentation and is intended to be simple enough for any end user interested in customisation to understand and be able to extend for her personal use, so be sure to check it out for yourself! Read more →