The Building Coder

Panel Schedule Slots and Changing Room Level

An amazing solution to move existing rooms between levels while retaining all their information, some thoughts on managing slots in panel schedules, and a couple of useful JavaScript debugging console hints – Moving rooms to other levels – Slots in panel schedules – JavaScript debugging console commands... Read more →

DLL Conflicts and Replicating Schedule Sort Order

Today I highlight the following topics – I caved in to smartphone – Handling third party library DLL conflicts – Replicating schedule sort order... 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 →

Schedule Parameters and Shared Parameter GUID

Lots of information on, from and about schedule parameters, and a new elegant solution to a long-standing challenge – Direct access to shared parameter GUID – Getting parameter information from a schedule... Read more →

EstoreFile, Group Preview and RoomScheduleCloud

Lots of exciting topics for today – EstoreFile, extensible storage and embedding a raster image – Preview Image for a Group – Thoughts on migrating the Room Schedule sample to 64-bit: Request, Implementation suggestion, Problem, Response – Autodesk 2016 AEC showreel call for submissions... Read more →

Concrete Setout Points for Revit Structure 2015

I was prompted by a Revit API forum discussion thread on Jeremy's setoutpoint to take another look at my SetoutPoints structural concrete setout point add-in, publish it on GitHub and migrate it from Revit Structure 2013 to 2015. SetoutPoints is a Revit add-in for automatic placement and management of structural concrete setout points. Setout point markers are automatically generated at all vertices of structural members. They can be manually designated as minor or major: The major points are automatically numbered,... Read more →

DevDay, Meetup and Hackathon Event Calendar

Here is a list of upcoming events, most of which I will be involved in in one way or another: DevDays 2014 DevDay & DevHack in Las Vegas Meetups and Hackathons DevDays 2014 Here is the list of cities and dates where our DevDays events 2014 will be held around the world later this year. These events are accessible to ADN members. If you are not an ADN member and still would be interested in learning more about application development... Read more →

Teaching a Man How To Fish and Schedule Creation

As you all know, we at ADN spend a significant amount of our time ensuring that API information is available and easy to find for all. In order to find something, though, you often need to invest at least a minimum amount of effort in searching. This can be practiced, of course, and I obtain a useful answer to almost every question I ever have on any subject whatsoever from a single Internet search. Here are two examples of performing... Read more →

Refresh Element Graphics Display

I talked about how to refresh element graphics display back in 2011, and it seems like the time has come to revisit that topic. After that, I also want to mention an approach to determine the height of a schedule in a sheet and how to avoid running a web server. Refresh Element Graphics Display Afshin just submitted a comment about this on replacing an Idling event handler by an external event, and another developer asked something similar today, so... Read more →

Happy New Year!

Welcome back after the break and Happy New Year! I have already been busily answering cases for the past few days. Here are two of the topics that came up: Access to model arc centre point reference API-generated schedules on sheets lack title Before getting to those, let me present a photo and an interesting syntactic challenge from my non-technical activities in the past ten days. I spent some time after Christmas in the hills in Toggenburg, and we had... Read more →

Determine Location Attributes and Retrieve Key Elements

Here are two issues that we have visited in the past and seem to be worth recapitulating and summarising, on determining the location attributes of an element and retrieving all key elements in a key schedule. Determining the Location Attributes of a Component Element Question: I have extracted data from a Revit model via DBLink. Now I would like to establish a relation between a component element and its location-centric attributes, specifically its Level, Space, and the Room it is... Read more →

Grouping Schedule Headers and How to Do Something

Here is my first real Revit 2014 post, sharing some code friendlily provided by David Robison of Design Master showing how to use the ViewSchedule.GroupHeaders method. Using the ViewSchedule GroupHeaders Method Question: I am trying to call ViewSchedule.GroupHeaders, and it keeps throwing an unhandled argument exception saying "Headers could not be grouped. Parameter name: right". Answer: Yes, this issue has been raised in the past and a few solutions were suggested. First case The ViewSchedule.GroupHeaders produces the argument exception mentioned... Read more →

Cloud & Mobile, Extensible Storage Data Use in Schedules

My topics for today are: Cloud and mobile topics I covered so far Cloud-based round-trip 2D Revit model editing on any mobile device using SVG Extensible storage data use in schedules I am still meeting with my European DevTech colleagues here in Konk Leon, 'anse du Lèon', the cove of the lion, aka Le Conquet, Brittany. Yesterday, one of our topics was work we have done so far for cloud and mobile applications. It was very interesting to hear about... Read more →

Retrieving Schedules on a Sheet

Guy Robinson recently explained an easy way to access all elements in a schedule. Victor Chekalin picked up and expanded on that. Here is his solution to retrieve all schedules in a view and elements from a schedule. In his own words: One wonderful day I had to retrieve schedules which are presented on a sheet: At first I looked at the Revit API Help but unfortunately there is no method such as GetSchdulesOnView in the ViewSheet class. There is... Read more →

Accessing all Elements in a Schedule

Here is a quick little post, with a surprisingly short and simple answer to a short and seemingly difficult Revit API question. Before getting to that, I will just mention that I arrived safe and sound in Paris for a developer conference here. I had a walk in the sunset on the north bank of the Seine from the Gare de Lyon along the industrial areas on Quai de Bercy and crossed the river over the new-built Pont National to... Read more →

Geometry Object Subcategory

I received and have started installing and learning to use my new laptop, which is a Mac, I'm finishing up my preparations for Autodesk University, and I'm working on preparations for upcoming developer conferences, so you can imagine there is rather a lot to do and 24 hours per day seem very limiting. I love the Unix shell! Goodbye, DOS box. Thank goodness my colleague Joe Ye answered a case that I found interesting and would like to share with... Read more →

The Schedule API and Access to Schedule Data

Somehow I seem to be spending the vast majority of my time just shovelling information back and forth, preparing for conferences and trainings and answering questions. It is always a great pleasure for me to actually get in a teeny weenie bit of programming in between, so I am happy that I managed to find time to create the new little sample application described below. One of the many exciting enhancements in the Revit 2013 API is the new Schedule... Read more →