The Building Coder

The Road Ahead

Here is a recent presentation that I would like to share with you by Jim Quanci, Senior Director of the Autodesk Developer Network ADN, on current business aspects of interest to Autodesk, the industry in general, and obviously also us Revit API developers. To enjoy this best, please scroll through Jim's slide deck in parallel with the following text that I extracted from it: The Road Ahead – Prepare Yourself and Your Company Lets start with some important questions: Do... Read more →

Write Revit Add-ins No Coding Experience Required

Adam Sheather of YTL Corporation created and presented a complete and in-depth Revit API introduction titled Learn to Write Add-ons No Coding Exp Required! for RTC, the Revit Technology Conference 2014, held in Australia, Europe and North America. He describes it like this: This course is for expert users of Revit who wish to learn how to code. This will cut a lot of non essential information from standard and other coding classes to get users quickly up to speed... Read more →

RoomEditorApp Plurals and Free Educational Software

Yesterday, I mentioned some last-minute clean-up of the JavaScript part of my room editor, adding the handlebars module and a call to refresh on save. Today, for the sake of completeness, I'll add a last-minute pass over the Revit add-in part as well, including an even more trivial change. I'll also mention that I had some time out in nature again, before jetting to Toronto for two days next week, celebrating a deep and wonderful sweat lodge or back to... Read more →

Exchange Apps Webinar Recording and Resources

As you certainly know by now, the Autodesk Exchange Stores provide an efficient means to showcase and distribute your applications addressing a large world-wide audience. Furthermore, it is very easy. As krispy just said in this Revit API forum thread on creating an installer for a Revit application, "You can just zip up the files they require (dll, addin, etc.) and upload that... the exchange app team will create the installer for you. They are pretty good with telling you... Read more →

AEC Hackathon, DevGuide URL and AppStore Webinar

As mentioned, I registered for the upcoming AEC Symposium and Hackathon in New York this coming weekend, May 16-18. You can learn more about both at http://core.thorntontomasetti.com/aec-technology-symposium-2014, and especially check out the interesting projects proposed for the AEC Hackathon. I'm looking forward very much to that and would be happy to meet you there! Revit API Developer Guide Shortcut URL The Revit API Developer Guide shortcut URL has changed and is now www.autodesk.com/revitapi-help. To my utter shock and chagrin, the... Read more →

On Handling Warnings and Failures

Many aspects of detecting and handling dialogues and failures have been discussed in the past. Let's look at this area again, based on two recent questions, a basic and an advanced one, and also mention some Revit 2015 enhancements to the Revit Developer Centre: Programmatic handling of warning messages Resolving failures using the Failure API Revit 2015 enhancements to the Revit developer centre Programmatic Handling of Warning Messages Question: Is it possible with the Revit MEP 2011 API to handle... Read more →

No DevCamp – Better – NY AEC Technology Symposium

I have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that Autodesk and ADN will be supporting the AEC Technology Symposium taking place in New York City May 16-18. The bad news is that we are not holding an Autodesk AEC DevCamp this year, as we did on a bi-annual basis on the North American West Coast in 2008, 2010 and 2012, and out of sequence in Moscow, Russia, last year. However, the AEC Technology... Read more →

AutoCAD and Revit API Training in Peru

My colleague Augusto Gonçalves points out that we are holding Spanish-language AutoCAD .NET and Revit API training classes in Lima, Peru on April 7-8, and April 9, 2014, respectively. To participate in either one, please complete the registration survey. Read more →

Revit API Help Online and Hiking on La Palma

Good news for all Revit add-in developers from Peter Boyer of the Dynamo team, working on visual programming for Revit, who brought you the Dynamo Revit Unit Test Framework. He says: We use the Revit API docs a lot, so I decided to build a website that basically just makes the Revit API help file RevitAPI.chm file provided with the Revit SDK more visible on the web: revitapisearch.com I found it makes it easier to point other developers to the... Read more →

No Inheritance and No Strong Naming

Here are two little items of general long-standing interest that just came up in a Revit API discussion forum: Why you cannot derive a new class from FamilyInstance. Why the Revit API assemblies are not strongly named. These two issues sometimes come as a surprise to developers experienced in OOP and other CAD system programming. However, there are good reasons for both. Here are the detailed explanations: Why You Cannot Derive a New Class From FamilyInstance Question: I would like... Read more →

AppHack 2, Training Material and the Developer Guide

Let me talk today about the second edition of the AppHack contest, ADN Revit API training material and developer guide. Revit 2013 API Developer Guide PDF As you know, the Revit API Developer Guide is online only and has been so since the Revit 2013 timeframe. I am a great fan of quick ubiquitous immediate access to information, including offline, so I would love a PDF version of it as well. Nor am I alone in this, as you can... Read more →

Back and Preparing for AU and DevDays Conferences

I returned from my nine-day break and am fully invigorated and happily back with the Revit API. Besides handling questions from developers, I also need to deal with the upcoming yearly conference preparations. On one hand, we have Autodesk University, for which registration opened and I need to prepare my three classes. As you know, AU is completely open and public, based on the released Autodesk products, and addresses both end users and developers. The Autodesk Developer Network ADN, supporting... Read more →

ADN Training Material on GitHub and Portathon Reminder

My colleague Gopinath Taget and I completed the migration of the ADN Revit API training material in preparation for the Sydney Revit API training, even though the training actually ended up based on completely new spontaneus project ideas from the participants instead, making it more fun, challenging and creative. Anyway, here are some steps of the migration path and pointers to more detailed information: Migrating the ADN training labs to Revit 2014 The ADN sample AdnRme for Revit MEP 2014... Read more →

Exchange App Videos and DevTV YouTube Channel

I recently mentioned the Exchange App Portathon event at which you can Earn $100 Submitting an App. To further support and simplify this task, my colleagues Mikako Harada and Gopinath Taget have lately been busy creating a series of videos showing exactly how to publish apps to the Autodesk Exchange Store for Revit. The videos are also accessible from the Autodesk DevTV YouTube channel as part of the Publish Your Revit Apps to Autodesk Exchange Store playlist. Topic Length (min:sec)... Read more →

Spanish Revit API Training in Mexico

Hello. I am not really back yet, but my vacation is slowly drawing to a close, and I checked my email. Here is the first result of that: My colleague Augusto Gonçalves from the ADN team in São Paulo is providing two days each of AutoCAD.NET and Revit API training in Mexico and in Spanish on September 3-4 and 5-6, respectively. Here are direct links to the course descriptions and registration page. Now to enjoy the last couple of hours... Read more →

Sydney Revit API Training and Vacation

My days down under were pretty intense. I left Switzerland Sunday night and arrived safe and sound in Sydney early Tuesday morning. I took the train from the airport into the town centre and back out again to the Autodesk offices at Macquarie Park in North Sydney. Three hours later, I was teaching the two-day Revit API training. At the time of writing this, it is Thursday afternoon and I am sitting on the plane back home again. I am... Read more →

Earn $100 Submitting an Autodesk Exchange App

I arrived safe and sound in Australia and will write about the Sydney Revit API training soon. Before getting to that, here is a short note to highlight the exciting possibility of earning a cool $100 by submitting an app to the Autodesk Exchange store, and the Portathon that we are hosting on September 13-14 to support this effort. Exchange App Portathon You cannot find the time to publish your app on the Autodesk Exchange Apps store? Good news for... Read more →

Recursively Disable Architecture Mismatch Warning

I recently explained the cause and resolution of the processor architecture mismatch warning MSB3270. On closer consideration, I decided to fix it for all the ADN training material labs and samples, and actually for the entire collection of Revit SDK samples as well. This is obviously not something you want to do manually, considering that it involves a modification of hundreds of project files. Here are the steps involved in automating and testing this process: Disable mismatch warning utility Project... Read more →

Key Concepts of the Family Editor

Today I am returning back home from the very successful Revit API DevCamp in Moscow. We received very good feedback from the participating developers who were so excited to learn about Revit programming that they ignored the hot environment, the unbearable sound of the false fire alarm and crazy running down the exterior staircase and back up again to the Autodesk offices on the 17th floor. Here is Артур Кураков (Artur Kurakov) teaching one of the Revit API beginner sessions:... Read more →

ADN Training Material for Revit Structure 2014

Here comes the final step of migrating the ADN training material and The Building Coder samples to Revit 2014. The previous steps included: ADN Revit API training labs ADN Revit MEP sample AdnRme The Building Coder samples migration and deprecated API usage cleanup Now we turn to the final component, the ADN training material for Revit Structure, consisting of: Revit Structure training labs Revit Structure link sample NewRstLab RstAvfDmu The ADN Revit Structure Training Labs The ADN Revit Structure training... Read more →

Wishlist Survey Reminder and New SDK Sample Overview

Here is a quick post to remind you of the Revit API wishlist survey and provide the first overview of new SDK samples added in Revit 2014. Revit API Wishlist Survey Reminder I recently mentioned that this year's Revit API wishlist survey is now open. It closes end of this week, on June 15th, 2013. Only five more days to go. These are the relative numbers of repsonses for the various products in percent so far: 39 AutoCAD 22 Revit... Read more →

Migrating the ADN Training Labs to Revit 2014

My colleague Gopinath Taget has started supporting the Revit API as well, and we are very happy he is joining our workgroup. He migrated the ADN Training Labs to Revit 2014, and I cleaned up and documented the results a little. Just like for the migration of The Building Coder samples, the changes are quite small this time around and the basic procedure is the same, so you should refer back to that post to see how to update the... Read more →

Exchange App Webinar and Travel Plans

Register and mark your calendar now for this upcoming webcast on making the most of the Autodesk Exchange Apps store: "How developers can ride and profit from the Autodesk Exchange Apps adoption wave" There are currently 15 Autodesk Exchange Apps stores. They represent a huge opportunity for developers to gain direct access to the growing number of Autodesk customers using Exchange Apps. In just one year they have enjoyed over one million visits and over 250,000 downloads. With comments like... 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 →

ADN Revit API Training Material Update and Vacation

After cleaning up the usage of deprecated Revit API calls in The Building Coder samples, I decided to clean up the ADN training material as well. My original plan was to remove all warnings about deprecated API usage, only I quickly discovered there were none to remove :-) In the MEP sample application AdnRme, I just updated the year listed in the copyright message to 2013 and produced AdnRme version 2013.0.2.0. I then did the same for the ADN Revit... Read more →

What I Do, Wall Layers and Open Transactions

One of my tasks today and tonight will be a minimal little contribution to an in... Read more →

Mobile Device Room Location

I had a so-called education day last Friday, and one of our current goals for these days is to learn about mobile and cloud computing. Here is my account of activities and research that day. Please excuse me for exposing my fallibility in this rambling account of a spontaneous unstructured single-person work-in-progress project. The task I set myself was to query the location of a mobile device and determine the room it is located in in the Revit model. That... 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 →

AU Registration and ADN Open

Preparations for Autodesk University 2012 on November 27-29 at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas are moving along as usual. Registration is now open, and, following Kean's suit, I just registered as well. I already mentioned the classes I will be presenting. More details on these have emerged, since the time plan has been settled and the AU class catalogue is now available: CP4107 Let's face it: New Autodesk Revit 2013 UI API Functionality Thursday, Nov 29, 1:00 PM... Read more →

Validate Roof Type and View OBJ on Android

I spent some time exploring how to view the output generated by the OBJ exporter on an Android tablet. Viewing an OBJ Model on Android That proved to be easy. I installed the KiwiViewer open-source visualization app, which supports OBJ, and used Dropbox to upload the OBJ export of my Revit model to the Internet, from where I could access it on the tablet from anywhere. Anywhere with a wifi Internet link, that is. It works fine as far as... Read more →

Vacation Time and Various Notes

To tell the truth, today is not a vacation day, but the Swiss national holiday, right in the middle of my vacation. In my last post, I mentioned various urgent and important issues that I still wanted to take care of. I am very happy to tell you that these items all felt a lot less urgent and important after immersing myself in a couple of days of vacation in Avignon to visit family and attend some offerings of one... Read more →

OBJ Model Exporter with Transparency Support

Tuesday evening the moon was full, the rain finally eased up a bit, the sky became completely clear, and I spent a couple of hours outside on a hill with a beautiful view, a group of friends, and a nice hot fire. On Wednesday I finally got to play hockey again with my Autodesk colleagues after a long period of missing out on that. I hope all US Americans enjoyed a nice Independence Day. The next days are filled with... Read more →

Getting Going with the Cloud

I am now the proud owner of an Android tablet and happily thinking about things to do with it. The first idea that comes to mind is working through something similar to Adam's Revit model viewer for iOS that Jim Quanci showed at the AEC DevCamp. Before getting into that, though, I should address some of the issues brought up by Senthil in his comment on the discussion on service-oriented architecture, asking for information about Revit cloud development, e.g. a... Read more →

AEC DevCamp 2012 Material

Both the AEC and Manufacturing DevCamp 2012 material is now publicly available. The top-level node provides access to the overviews and the five main tracks, i.e. Revit Beginner Revit Advanced Infrastructure Cloud/Mobile and Other Business For completeness' sake, here is the list of are the Revit beginner sessions: These are the Revit advanced topics: I presented some details from a number of the advanced Revit API session in my reports from DevCamp day one and DevCamp day two. In conjunction... Read more →

DevLab and Room Separation

Today is DevLab with almost fifty participants, so we are in several separate rooms. I never left the Revit room, and am busy enough with that. Talk about room separation. Here are one or two little items that cropped up today, contributed by Eric Boehlke of truevis.com. The first is actually a question on the creation of room separation lines that I already replied to in response to a comment from Ammar on creating a mass: Creating a Room Separation... Read more →

DevCamp Day Two

This morning I presented my second session, on some of the Revit 2013 UI API enhancements, in the Revit API beginner track. After that, I returned back to the Revit API expert one to attend the presentations on modeless interaction and IFC before presenting my final session on the Revit MEP API. Here then are my sessions of today, in chronological order: 1-4 Revit 2013 UI API enhancements 2-3 Asynchronous interactions 2-2 IFC export open source 2-7 Revit MEP API... Read more →

DevCamp Day One

The first thing that happened here at DevCamp was that I was personally really deeply touched and honoured. The conference was opened by Jim Quanci, director of ADN, the Autodesk Developer Network. He asked all of us twenty-five-plus Autodesk employees up onto stage and introduced us one by one. When the turn came to your humble author (or not so humble, after all), he asked all readers of this blog to raise their hands. Almost every person in the room... Read more →

Revit 2013 API Webcast Recording

The recording of the Revit 2013 API webcast that we held on May 17 is now available from the ADN DevTech Webcast Recordings Archive, entering "Revit API" as the course topic, or directly from here. The 34 MB zip file includes: ReadMe.txt Slide deck Recording Code Samples The webcast addresses two main areas: an introduction to Revit programming for beginners, including a quick walkthrough of basic concepts, and a discussion of some of the new functionality provided by the Revit... Read more →

Revit API Webcast Tomorrow

Here is a short final reminder about the Revit API webcast taking place tomorrow, 25 hours from now. As I mentioned, we are holding it on Thursday, May 17, Ascension Day (register). You can find it together with all the other ADN DevTech training opportunities in the Training Course Schedule, entering "Revit API" as the course topic. It will be divided into two parts of roughly equal length, presented by Balaji and me. Balaji is taking care of the first... Read more →

DevDays Online on What's New in Revit 2013

A recording of the "What's New in the Revit 2013 API" presentation from the DevDays conferences that we presented on the world-wide tour during the winter months is now live, both by selecting "DevDaysOnline-Revit2013API" in the public ADN webcast recording archive (download recording) and on the members-only ADN web site. The 88 MB download contains the following: Recording – MP4 and supporting files (73,682,898 bytes) Presentation – DevDays Online - Revit 2013_Whats New.pptx (4,915,103 bytes) Sample code ReadMe.txt RoutingPreferenceAPI ScheduleAPI... Read more →

Xtra ADN Revit 2013 API Training Labs

I finished the Munich Revit API training yesterday and celebrated with a picnic and a snooze in the sunshine on the on the bank of the river Isar followed by a wave with Maja Mühlbauer in the evening. Today I am heading back home again. Before leaving, let me post the updated ADN Revit API Training material that I used. Lab Projects Most of it is a copy of the migration of the official ADN Revit 2012 API Labs provided... Read more →

Munich API Training

Today is the second day of the Munich Revit API training, with the following participants and a nice mix of interests in formwork and scaffolding, infrastructure, concrete walls and bridges, facade, glass, roof structures, stadiums, parameteric design using Grasshopper and Rhino, generative components, connecting CAD and FEM, bridge engineering in steel and concrete, elevator software and freelance architect and civil engineering consultancy: Anis Naroura Thomas Jarzyna Kai Timmermann Simon Hooper, Bestech Systems Ltd. Andre Ihde, PhD TU Munich Dirk Cleff,... Read more →

Failure Rollback

I am in full blast preparing and updating material for the Revit API training in Munich starting the day after tomorrow, as well as the upcoming AEC DevCamp conference and another event that I have not even mentioned here yet: Revit 2013 API Webcast We will be holding a webcast on the Revit 2013 API on May 17, Ascension Day (register). A list of all the ADN DevTech training opportunities is provided by the Training Course Schedule, entering "Revit API"... Read more →

DevCamp and Refresh Display for a Kinetic Facade

Welcome back from the Easter break, if you had one. We are pretty busy right now preparing for our next conference, the DevCamps. Ah yes, and before that I have to get ready for the Revit API Training in Munich coming up soon. AEC DevCamp and DevLab – Join us at Camp this Summer! The bi-annual Autodesk AEC DevCamp is taking place near Boston on June 6-7. DevCamps are held every other year where software developers like you can learn... Read more →

Migrating VSTA Macros to SharpDevelop

As you probably noticed, we held a very successful and exciting Revit API training course and DevLab recently in Melbourne. More face-to-face hands-on trainings are planned, as you can see from the ADN Training Course Schedule, entering "Revit API" as the course name. Revit API Hands-On Training in Munich The next scheduled class that I will be conducting is taking place in Munich, Germany, on April 25-26 (register). If you are interested in participating in a class, you will benefit... Read more →

Great Ocean Road and Creating Your Own Key

The post-DevLab evening I spent with Paul and Nick on Friday night turned into something of a pub crawl and one of the most pleasant post-training evenings for a long time. Delightful company of highly talented programmers with a wide range of non-programming interests. One of the many interesting topics that we discussed was on identifying a set of beams originating in different systems, and I suggested creating your own key. If you want to skip my weekend blather, please... Read more →

Melbourne DevLab

The last few days I started walking on foot from Flinder Station to Queen's Road. I can enjoy lush green grass, beautiful huge trees and strange birdsong in morning sunlight all the way past the Shrine of Remembrance. It takes just ten minutes longer than waiting for the overfilled noisy slow tram, in which I am forced to stand and therefore can't look out through the windows due to my height. The Melbourne Revit API training day one and day... Read more →

Melbourne Day Two

On the second day of the Revit API training here in Melbourne, we addressed a number of further interesting issues, both basic and beyond. Our sample code ended up demonstrating the following functionality: Revit MEP model creation: place a duct. Geometrical analysis: retrieving unique geometry vertices from a selected element. Besides that, we looked at extensible storage, and I compiled an updated version of the RstLink sample for Revit Structure 2012. I also received interesting comments on a previous post... Read more →

Melbourne Day One

These days right now represent a unique time in our life history. Venus and Jupiter are in a stunning conjunction, closer together right now than they will ever be again for the next two hundred years. If you have a chance, don't forget to look up at the sky in the evenings! In another unique and far-away event, at least from my normal habitat, we completed the first day of the Revit API Training here in Melbourne. Talking about being... Read more →

BIM versus Free Geometry and Product Training

Before even thinking about developing an add-in for Revit, i.e. before making any use of the Revit API, you first need to ensure that you have a good understanding of the Revit product and its philosophy. This is especially important for developers with experience with other CAD products, especially AutoCAD. Programming for a Parametric BIM versus Freely Defined Geometry In AutoCAD, as a developer, you have complete freedom to mess around with the database and its elements in any way... Read more →