The Building Coder

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 →

Football and Space Adjacency for Heat Load Calculation

Here is a summary of a discussion with Jasper Desmet, who is studying engineering and working on a research project for his master thesis concerning heat load calculation using BIM software, proving that it is possible for a novice programmer to extract the required information from the model using the Revit API. Football Tournament, Fleece and Shard First, though, let me mention that I visited the UK this weekend to participate in the Autodesk European soccer tournament, which took place... 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 →

Auto PDF Print from Revit 2014

Below, we will take a look at a Revit multi-project batch PDF printer project driven by the Windows task scheduler and the Revit Idling event. Before getting to that, though, let me share some of my Sunday activities. Contact Impro Jam and Tech Summit Arrival From the Fells, I continued along the Mystic Valley Parkway and stopped to enjoy the beautiful Mystic Lakes on my way to the weekly Sunday contact improvisation jam in the Arlington Center, followed by a... 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 →

RevitRubyShell for Revit 2014

Håkon Clausen of dRofus AS published an updated version of RevitRubyShell. In Håkon own words: I have updated the add-in to 2014 and added new docking and idling features. It was all completely modal in Revit 2013, which was a little inconvenient. There was some trouble with the key input focus working with modeless and idling in earlier versions, e.g., using the tab and enter keys. In Revit 2014, the new dockable panel feature in combination with idling solves that... 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 →

Parameter DisplayUnitType, Bretagne and Decompilers

After looking at several performance enhancement possibilities last week, e.g. the sweep family performance enhancement and LoadFamily and collector iteration performance, here is another exciting and pretty sophisticated exploration of internal Revit API implementation details by Victor Chekalin that can be used to achieve a significant speed improvement when accessing large numbers of parameters and checking their DisplayUnitType property. Brittany Before getting to that, though, here is an update on my current whereabouts. Yesterday I spent travelling to Brest and... Read more →

Export Wall Parts Individually to DXF

I am back from my vacation. It was a wonderful break, and I feel ready and happy to get back to grips with everyday life and work again. A query from a colleague caught up with me already on the way back, on exporting a whole bunch of selected wall panel parts to individual DXF files. That gave me something nice and interesting to fiddle with during the nightly train ride up from Napoli to Milano and led to the... Read more →

Curve Evaluation and Song of the Gulls

Below, we take a look at one aspect of parametric NURB spline curve evaluation and an overview of recent AEC DevBlog posts. First, however, another update on my vacation :-) Marvels of the Song of the Gulls I am winding up my vacation on the Island of Ischia that I first discovered three years back. It is one of my favourite places in the world, where I visited natural wonders such as hot thermal springs of Sorgeto in Panza, where... Read more →

What's New in the Revit 2013 API

This is the fourth and last instalment of a series publishing the information provided in the 'What's New' sections of the past few Revit API releases help file RevitAPI.chm. The first instalment covering What's New in the Revit 2010 API explains my motivation for this and provides an overview of the other releases. We now move on to the Revit 2013 API, looking at: Major changes and renovations Major enhancements Small enhancements & API interface changes First, however, another update... Read more →

What's New in the Revit 2012 API

This is the third instalment of a series publishing the information provided in the 'What's New' sections of the past few Revit API releases help file RevitAPI.chm. The first instalment covering What's New in the Revit 2010 API explains my motivation for this and provides an overview of the other releases. We now move on to the Revit 2012 API, looking at: Major renovations Major enhancements Small enhancements and changes First, however, another update on my vacation. Unexpected Places, and... Read more →

What's New in the Revit 2011 API

This is the second instalment of a series publishing the information provided in the 'What's New' sections of the past few Revit API releases help file RevitAPI.chm. The first instalment covering What's New in the Revit 2010 API explains my motivation for this and provides an overview of the other releases. We now move on to Revit 2011, looking at: Major renovations Major enhancements Small enhancements and changes First, however, an update on my vacation so far. Snowstorm in Italy... 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 →

Grand Canyon and AU Arrival

I always try to arrive early in Las Vegas to acclimatise and recover from jetlag before the conferences begin. I bring my sleeping bag and sleep in the desert. Sleeping in the cold dry winter desert under starlight, watching the sunset, the slow progress of the moon across the sky, the stars rotating over me, is the best acclimatisation I can imagine. I was blessed with some shooting stars during the last night as well. In previous years, I went... Read more →

Survey and Project Base Point

Happy Thanksgiving! I am on the road to Las Vegas now, gearing up for last-minute AU preparations. No actually, I am pretty much set to go. Other upcoming developer conferences still require some work, though. Meanwhile, here is some useful information on survey and project base points gathered by my colleague Joe Ye: Question: We need to work with the project base point and the survey point to design platforms in real-world coordinate systems and load survey data from DXF... 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 →

UR1 and Line Origin versus Start and End Point

My official vacation time has begun. I still have rather a backlog of important, pending, almost completed projects, unanswered blog comments, and unavoidable meetings, so I will be online now and then in spite of that. I also want to keep us all updated on important little titbits such as the UR1: Revit 2013 Update Release 1 The Revit 2013 Update Release 1 is now available for download and installation from the web and within the product through Communication Center.... 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 →

Family Instance Element Coordinate System

I spent last weekend in Sweden for my 35 year school anniversary, having graduated from the German school in Stockholm in May 1977. The day after our reunion I visited a friend's summer house on the little lake Kvarnsjön in Huddinge: Back to the Revit API, after having taken a second look at connector orientation, here is another MEP coordinate system topic that can bear updating and coincidentally also has a connection to Scandinavia, since Progman Oy and Olli are... 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 →

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 →

Retrieve Geometry in Element Coordinate System

I am travelling rather further afield than usual today, and actually have been doing so all day yesterday as well. My normal paths remain inside of Europe, with occasional trips once or twice a year to the USA, for AEC DevCamp and Autodesk University. Now, exceptionally, I am on my way to Melbourne, Australia, to present a Revit API training and DevCamp next week. Meanwhile, here is an interesting little issue brought up by Olli Kattelus, software developer of MagiCAD... Read more →

Chinese New Year Impressions

On Monday I mentioned the Chinese New Year of the dragon. In fact, the whole of this week is a holiday in China and our offices there. Here is a special post just to share some impressions of the Chinese New Year from my colleague Joe Ye in Beijing, to give you an idea of what they are up to over there during this week, to help more people better understand China and this aspect of its culture. There were... Read more →

Finding a Development Partner

I was able to recuperate a bit from the previous weeks' travels and conferences in Milan this weekend, where I did very little except feel exhausted and ill. Now I am fine again, though, and arrived safely for the developer conference and DevLab here in Farnborough in the UK. The plane last night was late, of course, so I checked in way after midnight, but at least we all made it here this year :-) Now and then, people ask... Read more →

Loading an Inventor ADSK Component

We held the DevLab in Munich yesterday before rushing off to get to Milano in the evening. I slept a little bit in the taxi and plane on the way here. I was still dead tired on arrival at the hotel just before ten, but thought I absolutely must get out and have a teeny weeny little sniff of Italy anyway before going to bed. I went to a bar right next door and committed the deadly foreigner sin of... Read more →

AVF Displays Intersections and Highlights Rooms

We held a DevLab in Gothenburg yesterday with lots of interesting things to discuss with our Scandinavian developer guests. Today we are in Munich, Germany. So is Kean :-) One of the topics that came up yesterday is a thing I have been wanting to write about for over a year now and never gotten around to, the use of the AVF or Analysis Visualisation Framework to display temporary geometry to the user. I used it myself to display a... Read more →

Copy a Model from a Revit Server

Yesterday evening we had dinner together with developer partners at Heaven 23 again, the same place we visited last year, with its unique reflection-accessible cloud. Today we are holding a DevLab here in the Autodesk office in Gothenburg in Sweden, providing an opportunity for developers to come visit us with their day-to-day work in progress and current issues. Meanwhile, here is a question related to the Revit Server and its API: Question: How can I copy a Revit file out... Read more →

Top Faces of Sloped Wall Update

On Saturday we left Paris and arrived in Göteborg, or Go:teborg as the local tourist office appears to like spelling it. On Sunday we went for a trip on one of the public transportation ferry boats out to Vrångö. From right to left you see Jim, Partha, Philippe, and me, and Adam is taking the picture: Fittingly enough, I also had some correspondence on a Revit API issue with a Swedish developer on the same day: Henrik Bengtsson of Lindab... Read more →

REX Content Generator

I had an absolutely magical experience in Israel before leaving Tel Aviv Thursday afternoon. Among many others at the developer conference on Wednesday, we met with Dima Brickmann of Omnitech, and he suggested going for a short visit to Jerusalem before returning to the airport, which is located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Partha and I decided to join him. Dima has a very special relationship with the city and a deep philosophical and photographical view of it, so he... Read more →

Interior Side of a Wall

I really enjoyed my little outing in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening to the 5Rhythms City Wave offered by Rivi Diamond. Confusing Ramat Gan with Tel Aviv and First Hebrew Characters Getting there turned out to be unexpectedly adventurous, because while I assumed that I was walking around in Tel Aviv, I was in fact in the neighbouring city Ramat Gan. Two parallel streets named Jabotinsky and Arlozorov span both of them, and I was running around in the area... Read more →

Export Solid to ACIS

Today we are en route to Tel Aviv in Israel after the successful conference held in Moscow yesterday. In Tel Aviv I even have a personal activity lined up, besides the official reason for going there to hold another conference on Wednesday: a 5Rhythms City Wave is offered very Tuesday evening by Rivi Diamond and fits my schedule perfectly. That will provide another wonderful change from airplanes, taxis, hotels, and conferences. Meanwhile, here is a sweet little question on exporting... Read more →

Unit Conversion and Display String Formatting

AU went very well for me, and I think this was the one I liked most of all so far, to my own surprise. Now I am already at the next conference in Moscow, from where I continue to Tel Aviv tomorrow. December is always my monster travelling month, and I never get to prepare for Christmas or enjoy the dark and cosy celebration of Advent. But I really did have fun and enjoy AU in Las Vegas. Sunday morning... Read more →

Project Structure Generator on Autodesk Labs

I arrived safely in Las Vegas after a 12:40 hour flight to Los Angeles, 3:30 hour wait, und another flight of 1:05 hours. Pretty crazy. I had a headache after that, but not too bad, and I slept well out in the desert. Just like in previous years (08, 09, 09b, 10), my daytime jetlag therapy consists of climbing in Red Rock, this time with Sergio Colombo again, whom I first met and climbed with in 2008. We did the... 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 →

Associative Section View Fix and Greece

Here I am back from a very pleasant break. Break in Greece As mentioned, I gave a Revit API training in Athens last week. I was able to extend my stay to visit the Acropolis and spend a wonderful extended weekend on the beaches of Limni or Λιμνι, on the island of Euboea. Very impressive, how the ancient Greeks built things that last for thousands of years, even though some renovation is required... Mastic Liqueur and Masticate One interesting thing... Read more →

Text Size

I am back again from the Autodesk European Football Tournament 2011 in Verona, Italy, vividly described in more detail by Kean on his blog. We were both part of the combined Global Services (to which we of ADN belong) and Worldwide Marketing team: Back to the Revit API, we already looked at some aspects of text formatting such as textnote alignment and rotation. Here is a still more immediate and simpler issue: Question: I created some text using the NewTextNote... Read more →

Improved MEP Element Shape and Mount Ararat

We recently talked about distinguishing Revit MEP duct element shapes, and Max aka Maciej Szlek presented a solution based on the analysis of the string value of the duct's Size parameter. I suggested that the algorithm might be improved, both to make it more general and robust and also to remove the dependency on the different string formats used for imperial and metric units. It probably becomes more efficient as well, by the way. Instead of looking at the duct... Read more →

Iteration and Springtime – Change is the Only Constant

I am back again from a wonderful relaxing Easter holiday with beautiful weather and an almost obscene wealth of blossoming trees and flowers in the Swiss Emmental region: Spring time really gives us an overwhelming impression of nature's capacity for rapid change! And change is the only constant... And, as we see below, change is a constant challenge in programming as well... Meanwhile, here are quick pointers to two of the many noteworthy items that cropped up during the past... Read more →

Khan Academy

Kean came up with another brilliant item that I cannot resist highlighting here as well, even if only to ensure that I myself don't lose track of this link to the non-profit Khan Academy myself. It has the motto "Watch. Practice. Learn almost anything – for free" and consists of a small team on a mission to deliver a world-class education to anyone anywhere. Topics include areas of interest for Revit API users such as algebra, geometry, trigonometry and linear... Read more →

Toposurface Interior and Boundary Points

I arrived here in Jeddah last night. I have not seen anything of it at all yet except through the hotel window, but I will go out exploring today. The Revit API training I am here to give begins on Sunday. The weekend here is on Thursday and Friday, so today is the holiest day of the week. Meanwhile, here is a recent question that gave me a very welcome chance to try my hand at implementing a little algorithm... Read more →

Converting Between 2D UV and 3D XYZ Coordinates

I have been busy the last couple of days preparing for the upcoming Revit API training in Saudi Arabia. First it was the challenging issue of obtaining a visa on short notice. That happily worked out fine. The last couple of days I spent getting training material ready. It will be interesting to see how it goes, both the training itself and also the visit to this inaccessible country, which according to Wikipedia has some of the most restrictive travel... Read more →

More Snow Woe

I thought we were very lucky in our travels around Europe so far, especially after hearing that one of the participants in the Munich DevLab had less luck. He left the workshop, went to the airport, boarded, flew to Cologne, and was unable to land due to snow. After nine hours of travelling he returned back to the starting point, to try it again from scratch another day. I mentioned our luck to my manager Gary Wassell, who responded that... Read more →

Birthdays and Gaps in Shells

On Wednesday we held our developer conference in Munich. It was very successful, the biggest of these events so far, and we had many interesting discussions, both during the event itself and at the dinner and pool games with partners in the evening. Thursday we continued with a DevLab, to which any developer interested in any Autodesk API is welcome. A couple of us DevTech guys are available, and the space is open for all discussions and questions, with no... Read more →

VSTA to Stay and Updater to Go

As you may have heard from Kean, we have safely arrived in Munich, Germany for the next developer conference, the biggest one in our European series. Actually, he only talks about his own arrival, but our arrival worked all right as well. One topic that we are discussing at these conferences is cloud computing, so it was a funny coincidence to run into a nice big tangible cloud when we went out to have a dinner with our developer partners... Read more →