The Building Coder

Dark Icons, NewFamilyInstance and AI News

Hacks for dark icons supporting Revit 2024 theme switching and news from the ever-accelerating AI revolution – Dark theme icons by ImageMagick – Embed dark theme icon name in BitMapSource – New NewFamilyInstance overload – Open-source AI surging ahead – Timeline of major milestones crossed – Non-technical explanation of AI and deep learning – Using AI to read your thoughts – AI emergent abilities may not be emergent after all – Risk of AI manipulation... Read more →

New Roadmaps, Dark Theme Possibility Looming

Happy New Year of the Rabbit, xīnnián hǎo, 新年好! Pondering the looming possibility of a dark theme in the Revit UI and API – Dark theme switching – API – icons – Code example: handling themed ribbon icons – New public roadmaps... Read more →

Forge, RevitApiDocs, Materials and Stacked Items

Here are some exciting Forge, Revit API and other topics for today – Forge online training in April 2021 – RevitApiDocs support for Revit 2021 – Welcome, AEC BIM Tools – Visual materials API in Dynamo – 24x24 stacked ribbon items – Innovative drone fly-through film... Read more →

On Spaces in Help and Renaming a Parameter

I am busy as ever in the Revit API discussion forum. Today, let's highlight a couple of items that were not discussed there – ContextualHelp with space – On renaming a shared parameter – Build a minimal neural network from scratch... Read more →

Setting up RvtSamples for Revit 2021

Another busy week so far – Loading all Revit 2021 SDK samples – Loading The Building Coder samples and labs – What database is best for Revit data?... Read more →

24x24 StackedItem, Ribbon Utils, Journal Encoding

Let's start the week with some ribbon button item and encoding topics – How to create 24x24 stacked ribbon items – Update on moving a ribbon button between panels – Revit journal file character encoding... Read more →

DA4R, FindInserts, Deployment and SplitButton

So many interesting things going on in the Revit API discussion forum. Also, the newest DA4R recording is now available online – Forge Design Automation API for Revit recording – Design Automation for Revit supports IFC – What does the FindInserts includeShadows flag do? – Easiest solution to deploy add-in – Always show the same button in SplitButton... Read more →

Design Automation API, Stacks, Collectors and Links

The ultimatively painless introduction to the Forge Design Automation API, a solution for creating two stacked ribbon items, reinitialising filtered element collectors and picking a face in a linked file – Forge Design Automation API webinars – Stacking two 24x24 ribbon items – Reinitialising the filtered element collector – Use CreateReferenceInLink to select a face in a linked file... Read more →

UI Top Forms, Buttons, Web, etc.

Several user interface related topics are being discussed in the Revit API discussion forum – Keep my form on top of Revit! – Creating buttons and getting started with an add-in UI – Integrating a web-based UI... Read more →

Resources, Rotated Rebar Stirrups and Steel Stuff

I'll start this week with several solutions from the Revit API discussion forum and elsewhere, especially two different approaches to create rotated rebar stirrups – Embedded tooltip icon resource – Revit 2019 tooltip videos are MP4 – How to read and write bolt, plate and weld – Creating rotated rebar stirrups... Read more →

Scaling a Bitmap for the Large and Small Image Icons

Every time I created a ribbon button, I was faced with the task of creating appropriately scaled icons for it to populate the PushButton large and small image icon properties LargeImage and Image. They seem to expect a 32 x 32 and 16 x 16 icon, respectively. I finally solved that once and for all by implementing a couple of methods to perform automatic bitmap scaling – BitmapImageToBitmap – convert a BitmapImage to Bitmap – BitmapToBitmapSource – convert a Bitmap to a BitmapSource – ResizeImage – resize an image to the specified width and height – ScaledIcon – scale down large icon to desired size for Revit ribbon button – Usage sample – putting them together... Read more →

DevDays, Keynote Manager and REX Extensions

Let's highlight a few recent threads from the Revit API discussion forum. Before getting to those, a quick pointer to the DevDays Online recording from last week – DevDays online presentations on Revit API updates – External command with ribbon button sample – RevitAddinKeyNoteSystem keynote manager – REX extensions versus Revit add-ins – Reloading Revit links from user selected folder – Converting all parameter values to metric... Read more →

Pipe Fitting K Factor, Archi+Lab and Installer

Two recent Revit MEP related cases brought up some new information on the pipe K factor table and custom calculations for pipe fittings, the Forge DevCon class recordings are now available, and I discovered Konrad Sobon's wonderful archi+lab Revit API blog, which helps resolve an installation and setup issue – Pipe K factor table – Custom K factor calculation for pipe fittings – Dynamo code to change loss coefficient – Forge DevCon 2017 class recordings – Archi+Lab – Revit add-in installer and buttons... Read more →

ADN Xtra Labs and API Changes since Revit 2013

As usual, I am answering Revit API cases and maintaining the documentation and training material. What I really should be doing is preparing my upcoming class for Autodesk University in Darmstadt. Here are some of the things I dealt with today – API changes from Revit 2013 to Revit 2017 – ADN Xtra Revit API Labs for Revit 2018 – Access to modified combo box setting... Read more →

SDK Update, RvtSamples and Setting Grid Endpoint

An updated version of the Revit SDK was published, I set up RvtSamples for Revit 2018, which I use to load The Building Coder samples, and we present a useful employment of the DatumPlane class methods GetCurvesInView and SetCurveInView – Revit 2018 SDK Update – RvtSamples for Revit 2018 – How to Modify Grid Curve End Points... Read more →

Work Half, AKS Opener, RvtFader and ForgeFader

I completed a first revision of the ForgeFader project, bringing it up to par with RvtFader. It is pretty cool seeing the same functionality implemented in two such different ways, on completely different platforms, using different tools. Alan Seidel shared another exciting Revit add-in. First and not least, another exciting topic for me personally is switching to half-time work – Work half – AKS Opener – Video – GitHub repository – Why? – Specific interest – RvtFader – ForgeFader... Read more →

WTA Mech and TTT for Provision for Voids

Today is the last day of the Forge accelerator, and I am still working on the ForgeFader project. The topics today are mainly related to Revit, though – Google prettifier on GitHub – WTA mechanical family placement add-in – Provision for void – What is a provision for void? – Creating a provision for void... Read more →

WTA Elec, FireP and 3D Aimer Tools

I am traveling to Gothenburg for the Forge accelerator. Meanwhile, Allan Seidel shared his WTA FireP 3D Aimer add-in that creates a custom ribbon tab with discipline related tools for placing specific Revit family types with some families requiring parameter settings made on the fly and the 3D Aimer example that "aims" a special Revit family to a target – WTA FireP 3D Aimer Tools – GitHub Repository and YouTube Video – Source Code Documentation – WTA Elec – Another Family Plunk and Concept Share... Read more →

Multiple Language RESX Resource Files

A large contribution today from Andrey Bushman, and a couple of upcoming Forge events – Supporting multiple language resource files – Creating and using localised resource RESX files – Upcoming Forge accelerators... Read more →

HoloLens Escape Path Waypoint JSON Exporter

Last week, I worked with Kean Walmsley on his entry for the first global Autodesk Hackathon: a HoloLens-based tool for navigating low visibility environments, resulting in the new HoloGuide Autodesk Hackathon project. My modest contribution is the ExportWaypointsJson Revit add-in, an external application implementing the main command, exporting the waypoints, and a subsidiary option settings command, displaying a form, validating input and storing the user preferences. The main command simply prompts the user to pick a model line in the Revit project, traverses it, determines waypoints at predefined intervals and exports them to JSON for consumption by the HoloGuide visualisation... Read more →

Stacked Ribbon Button Panel Options

Topic: a C# .NET Revit add-in demonstrating use of a split ribbon button to access a secondary command, e.g., option settings. In the Revit API discussion forum thread on using a StackButton as a PushButton with options, Allan 'aksaks' Seidel recently proposed a neat UI trick, saying: Perhaps this idea might be usable for others. The StackButton ribbon control is a stack of different PushButton instances where the last used PushButton remains visible to be used again. That visible button is reflected in the stack button's CurrentButton property. Imagine if the StackButton control always shows the first button in the stack, and the other button(s) are secondary to the first button's purpose... Read more →

Real-Time BIM Update with FireRatingCloud 2017

Yesterday, I migrated RoomEditorApp to Revit 2017 and mentioned the BIM and cloud related projects I am working on. Next, let's focus on the FireRatingCloud sample. The main goal there is to implement fully automatic real-time BIM update from the cloud. Now, 24 hours after writing the previous sentence, I can tell you that I succeeded. Well, add another six hours to edit this post... Here is the updated FireRatingCloud custom ribbon tab with its new set of commands... Read more →

Adding a Stacked Split Button to the Ribbon

I have been rather busy on the Revit API discussion forum these last few days. One of the issues I got involved with was Michał Helt's thread on RibbonPanel.AddStackedItems and SplitButton, discussing how to add a split button to a ribbon panel using the AddStackedItems method. Question: Currently, Split Buttons cannot be created in the ribbon using the AddStackedItems method. Only PushButtons, PulldownButtons, ComboBoxes and TextBoxes can be added this way. Would it be possible to remove this limitation?... Read more →

Element Selection Changed Event

Many add-in developers are interested in being notified when the current selection changes in the Revit user interface. Among other things, it led to the implementation of the selection watcher using the Idling event and was one aspect of the discussion of element level events. Checking for Selection Changes in Idling Event Handler Ken Goulding submitted a comment on that, saying: When you mentioned "Element Level", I was hoping that included element selection events, but that does not seem to... Read more →

Automation, Ribbon Panel, ItemExecuted and Vacation

Here is an interesting exploration of using UI Automation to traverse the Revit ribbon items and subscribe to an event enabling you to determine when certain commands are executed. I'll leave you to ponder this while I take a vacation in the snow next week. Happy Revit add-in programming! Question: I would like to keep track of all add-ins that are started on a given Revit installation. We currently keep track of all our own using specific routines in the... Read more →

A Couple of Recent Issues

I have been quiet here for several days now, very busy working on Revit API cases, but nothing very generic to share here. Instead, let me mention a couple of quick answers by Scott Conover of the Revit API development team to some other recent issues that cropped up: Ribbon settings and drop down pin Determining whether a family instance is joined ReferenceIntersector and face How to modify family instance geometry Ribbon Settings and Drop Down Pin Question: How can... Read more →

Upgrading Family Files Silently, Part 2

Last week, I provided some suggestions for upgrading family files silently, i.e. suppressing the warning messages displayed for every family file that requires updating when being loaded into a project, requiring a user confirmation for each one: Use a Revit file updater, e.g. the file upgrader on Autodesk labs provided by the ADN team. Handle the pop-up messages yourself using one of the techniques for handling dialogues and failures. Determine the Revit version used to save the family files before... Read more →

Moving an External Command Button within the Ribbon

I recently presented Frode Tørresdal's unofficial custom ribbon button implementation showing how you can add a custom button that Revit knows nothing about to the ribbon and hook it up with the Idling event to perform some action requiring access to the Revit API. It would be much simpler, safer and more effective if we could implement a normal official Revit external command instead and create a button anywhere we want in the Revit ribbon to drive that. Well, happily,... Read more →

Room Editor Live and Unofficial Custom Ribbon Button

I spent a wonderful weekend and yesterday's Whit Monday holiday enjoying high summer in Swiss nature with no electricity and a Chäschessi, the Swiss variant of a Jacuzzi or hot tub. Today I am leaving for a ten-day camping vacation in nature in Sweden. Here are two topics I would like to address before leaving that will hopefully keep you occupied and entertained during my absence: Room Editor Live Adding a custom button to the Modify tab Vacation time Room... Read more →

Programmatic Custom Add-In External Command Launch

One of the highlights of the Revit 2014 API is the new PostCommand functionality enabling programmatic launching of built-in Revit commands. The Revit SDK includes a new sample demonstrating its use, PostCommandWorkflow. However, that programmatically launches an existing built-in Revit command, not an external command added by a custom application. Furthermore, there was a problem launching custom external commands in the initial release of Revit 2014. Happily, it was fixed by the update release 1, UR1, a fact listed among... 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 →

Load Your Own External Command on the Fly

How to reload an external Revit command without having to restart the Revit session has been a subject of discussion many times in the past, e.g. in reloading an add-in for debug without restart, which lists four possibilities: Set up Visual Studio to efficiently load the desired project and the debugee, use the standard cycle hitting F5 to start debugging, and stop debugging when you need to make code changes. Use the RevitRubyShell or RevitPythonShell to work interactively with the... Read more →

External Command Lister and Adding Ribbon Commands

I have been asked a couple of times how you can integrate multiple Revit add-ins from different sources together into a single ribbon panel. This topic has also been discussed on the web, e.g. towards the end of whether to install to the add-ins tab or make new ribbon tab, and at Autodesk University, where Jose Guia presented CP3766 – Tying All of Your Revit Add-ins into a Pretty Little Ribbon. Unfortunately, none of these offer any very useful solution,... Read more →

A Simpler Dockable Panel Sample

Here is a very nice little sample on using the new Revit 2014 dockable panels by Håkan Wikemar of AEC, Sweden. In Håkan's words, it is close to the DockableDialogs SDK sample but easier to follow. The DockableDialogs SDK sample demonstrates modeless dialog design, external events, and the new dockable dialogs UI API framework. Håkan's DockableDialog sample described here focuses purely on the dockable panel functionality and nothing else. One thing to note is that you need to register the... Read more →

Adding a Button to Existing Ribbon Panel

Here is an interesting user interface contribution from Eduardo Teixeira of Autodesk: Question: I am building a Revit add-in using the Revit API. I would like to add a button for it to an existing out-of-the-box Revit ribbon panel using the Revit API in C#. I could not find any documentation that shows how to do that. Is it possible at all? Answer: Yes, this can be done. I am not certain whether it is officially supported, though. You will... Read more →

Determine Revit Demo Mode Revisited

Almost a year back, we talked about how to determine whether the current running Revit application is a demo version or not. The initial suggestion was to test this by trying to execute real functionality modifying the model and then save it. That obviously incurs significant overhead and may cause other problems as well. Rudolf Honke suggested simply reading and evaluating the Revit main window title text instead. Now Madmed created and posted an implementation of Rudolf's idea. I took... Read more →

URL and Other Buttons, XYZ Points and Vectors

Let me summarise a very few of the topics I have been chatting with people about in the past few days: Ribbon button identification Opening a URL from a ribbon button XYZ comparison and point and vector behaviour Autodesk API overview The Green Building Studio GBS REST API Actually, to tell the truth, it is just one day, so far, this week. Wow, my days are too full. I am getting nothing else done! Ribbon Button Identification Here is a... 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 →

Ribbon Creation Utility

Creating and populating a ribbon panel is not a very complicated matter, although it normally does require instantiating and manipulating quite a number of different cooperating class instances. Now Victor Chekalin, or Виктор Чекалин, presents a much simpler solution for this using dedicated wrapper classes. In his own words: Create Buttons without Effort As you know, you can create your own buttons or even your own tab in the Revit ribbon to perform a command. For me, creating button always... Read more →

Group My Own Commands in the Ribbon

Here is an issue that has been presented numerous times in the past, and apparently needs to be highlighted again for newbies. Question: I have implemented a Revit add-in which implements several commands. Currently, I have added all my commands to the add-in manifest file, as recommended by various examples I found on the Internet. It works and they do indeed appear in the Add-Ins ribbon tab under the 'External Tools' pull-down menu. The problem with this is that other... Read more →

Video Animated Ribbon Item Tooltip

We already discussed a number of interesting things you can do with the Revit ribbon and user interface, many inspired by Rudolf Honke's exploration of uses of the .NET UI Automation functionality. Here is a related contribution by Victor Chekalin, or Виктор Чекалин, fleshed out from his answer to Rudolf's question on animating a ribbon item tooltip, discussing the retrieval of embedded resource images: It is possible to add your own video to a Revit ribbon button tool tip, and... 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 →

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 →

Reducing Revit Debug Verbosity

Many people have complained about the amount of noise caused by the ribbon in the Visual Studio debug output window. Kean Walmsley just pointed out that you can easily make AutoCAD less noisy when debugging by adding a couple of lines to the acad.exe.config file, which lives in the same folder as the acad.exe you are debugging, such as C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2011, to ask the WPF binding trace provider to lower the volume. Since Revit uses the same internal ribbon... Read more →

Ribbon Panel Title Conflict

Here is another exploration into the inner workings of the Revit ribbon by Rudolf Honke of acadGraph CADstudio GmbH. He says: If you try to add a new Ribbon panel whose title is already used by another Add-In panel, it will throw an exception. You therefore have to ensure that no other third party panel uses the same text as you do. The Revit API method GetRibbonPanels will not find panels that are not yet loaded, and there is no... Read more →

Pimp my AutoCAD or Revit Ribbon

Here is another fun possibility to access and manipulate the Revit ribbon explored by Rudolf Honke of acadGraph CADstudio GmbH. He says: I've played around and found a possibility to modify the appearance of the AutoCAD and Revit ribbon bars. This is the Revit ribbon bar in its usual colour scheme: Now let's change the panel background image and panel headers: What about using a gradient fill and changing the tab header font: The style is persistent, even if you... Read more →

Enable Ribbon Items in Zero Document State

Several people have asked about how to activate their custom add-in panel items when Revit is in zero document state, i.e. when no document has been opened in the Revit user interface: For an external command, it is no big deal: if you set both its transaction mode and regeneration option to Manual, it will appear in the Revit ribbon panel under Add-Ins > External > External Tools and also be available in zero document state: However, as you can... Read more →

Explode a DWG

After yesterday's very practical note on creating a pipe cap, here is another slightly less practical note from Rudolf Honke of acadGraph CADstudio GmbH, who picked up on Sami's comment on subscribing to UI Automation events. Sami asks: Question: Is it possible to explode an imported DWG file using the API? Answer: After showing the mechanism of invoking commands twice, I do think this can be achieved. Just like all other ribbon elements, also the 'Explode' buttons are accessible via... Read more →