The Building Coder

Add-in Migration to Revit 2016 and Updated Wizards

I updated my Visual Studio Revit C# and VB add-in wizards for Revit 2016. Before presenting them, a quick important note on how to approach resolving issues that you may encounter migrating your existing add-ins: Please read What's New in the Revit 2016 API! Revit add-in wizards for Revit 2016 Revit add-in wizard customisation Revit add-in wizard usage Download and installation Please Read What's New in the Revit 2016 API! Every major Revit API release so far enhanced the existing... Read more →

List All Import Instances

Have you ever wondered whether you have any duplicate imported CAD instances in your model? My colleague Nikolay Shulga from the Revit development team implemented a nice little end user utility to answer this question. By the way, Nikolay and I go back a long time, way back in the beginning of the IAI and IFC project, decades ago, in previous lives... In Nikolay's own words: A while ago I wrote a prototype app to list ImportInstance objects in a... Read more →

State of the View and Data API, vA3C and Edge Ids

Today, let's take a look again at the current state of the View and Data API, vA3C and a case or two from the Revit API discussion forum: View and Data API news RvtVa3c enhancement filters parameters Defining keys or geometric references for curve vertices View and Data API News Question: I am interested in the Autodesk View and Data API that you wrote about last year. I am wondering what the current state and plans are for the Autodesk... Read more →

List and Switch Design Options Using UI Automation

Yesterday, we discussed a Revit add-in using .NET UI Automation to retrieve the current state of the Revit thin lines setting. Today, let's look at another application demonstrating use of that functionality to determine, list and set the Revit design options from a stand-alone executable application. Once again, this sample is presented by Revitalizer, aka Rudolf Honke of Mensch und Maschine acadGraph, who already contributed numerous other examples making use of the .NET UI Automation library to hack the Revit... Read more →

Thin Lines Add-in Using UI Automation

Revit add-in developers have repeatedly requested access to the Thin Lines setting provided in the Revit user interface, leading to Revit API discussion forum threads on view thin lines, exported image line weight (thin line) and rendering setting and a Revit API wish list item CF-192 – As an add-in developer, I need the API ability to detect and modify the "Thin lines" setting, so that the user can automatically get the environment configured in the way they like. Happily,... Read more →

A Dockable Web Browser

The Revit API supports add-ins defining their own dockable panels, similar to the built-in Revit project browser and element properties panels. Here is The Building Coder topic list of Dockable Panel related discussions: What's New in the Revit 2014 API A Simpler Dockable Panel Sample RevitRubyShell for Revit 2014 Revit 2014 Update Release 1 Open MEP Connector Warning Revit 2014 Update Release 2 I have repeatedly been asked bow to host a web browser in a dockable panel, and this... Read more →

From Hack to App – OBJ Mesh Import to DirectShape

I already took a couple of looks at the DirectShape element in the past: DirectShape Performance and Minimum Size DirectShape versus Families, Category and Texture A much deeper investigation was prompted by Eric Boehlke of truevis.com, knowledgeable in architecture and above all in photogrammetry. Eric visited the DevHack at Autodesk University in December 2014. Together, right there and then, we put together a prototype Revit add-in that reads an OBJ file and creates a DirectShape element from it. Eric continued... Read more →

Determining the Face Tangent at a Picked Point

Happy Valentine's Day! I keep repeating how much I love all kinds of geometric problems – besides my sweetheart, of course – merci filmool fier di scheeni Bliemli! Unfortunately, there are far too few of them around :-) Happily, Jordi just raised one in the Revit API discussion forum thread on an API C# question, providing another welcome opportunity to make use of the Face Project and ComputeDerivatives methods: Question: I'm coding a plugin for Revit 2015 that inserts a... Read more →

Displaying Progress Bar and Generating Animated GIF

A frequent request for Revit add-ins performing time-consuming tasks is to display a progress bar. My own progress bar implementation is provided by the ADN MEP sample application AdnRme, originally dating way back to 2009 and earlier still. Now Limin He of FM:Systems encountered and resolved an issue with his progress bar in VB.NET, raising the following comment on the topic of the new exceptions raised by multithreading in Revit 2015: Question: We came across the same issue described above... Read more →

Wall Elevation Profiles in The Building Coder Samples

Last week, I presented a stand-alone command by my colleague Katsuaki Takamizawa to retrieve wall elevation profiles. His implementation provides a nice little example of using the ExporterIFCUtils.SortCurveLoops method and differentiates between outer and inner loops. It can be used in almost exactly the same way as the first wall elevation profile implementation presented in 2008. After publication, Katsu-san and I discussed what to do next and unearthed a couple of interesting aspects: Response: Thank you very much for publishing... Read more →

Getting the Wall Elevation Profile

I am back from the vacation in Italy, which I enjoyed very much, especially another visit to the wonderful coast of Amalfi. To quickly share an interesting new result using the Revit API, here is a solution by Katsuaki Takamizawa to retrieve the wall elevation profile. It also provides a nice little example of using the ExporterIFCUtils.SortCurveLoops method that we just recently documented. Says Katsu: I created some sample code for finding the wall elevation profile and determining its outer... Read more →

ExporterIfcUtils Curve Loop Sort and Validate

Joel Spahn raised a pertinent question on sorting face loop edges that was kindly picked up and answered by Scott Conover and Angel Velez from the Revit development team: Question: It would be nice to know exactly what the following methods do: SortCurveLoops: sorts a set of curve loops such that outer and inner loops are separated. Remarks: Outer loops are separated and inner loops are grouped according to their outer loop. Loops are assumed to be non-intersecting, and there... Read more →

DevDays, GitHub, STL and OBJ Model Import

Long time no post. Sorry, I am rather caught up in the DevDays conferences, accompanying meetups and travel back and forth across the continent. After the first Western European DevDays conference and meetup in Paris on Monday, we continued and repeated in London, UK, and Gothenburg, Sweden. We had a day's break there, and I took a quick bus and ferry ride out to Styrsö before leaving. Now we have arrived in Munich, Germany, and the last goal for Tuesday... Read more →

SelFilter, a Powerful Generic Selection Filter Utility

I recently discussed the minimalist generic selection filter implementation JtElementsOfClassSelectionFilter that I added to The Building Coder samples. Alexander Buschmann of IDAT GmbH responded to that and says: I saw your generic SelectionFilter class and this reminded me of a little pet project I've done in my spare time that I thought your readers might be interested in. Two things always bothered me about the ISelectionFilter: You have to create a class to use it. Though most often you just... 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 →

Point Cloud Indexing Update

The Point Cloud API has changed a bit in the past couple of years, and it is time for an update of the previous point cloud overview from 2011. My re-exploration of this topic was triggered by Henrik's Revit API discussion forum thread on the point cloud indexer API: Question: Is there an API or another way to programmatically access the Indexer of PointClouds? I am referring to the dialog that pops up when you try to import a different... Read more →

ADN Labs Xtra on GitHub and RvtVa3c in Three.js

I had several cases recently discussing advanced Revit API exploration issues with experienced application developers new to the Revit API. Therefore, once again, the topic of available tools and their various uses came up. One important tool for me is the simple element lister, which is currently still part of the ADN Xtra labs, the precursor to the official ADN Revit API training labs. I had not yet migrated those to Revit 2015, so I now finally did so and... Read more →

Unique Names and the NamingUtils Class

The Revit API is still full of surprises. Here is another one that leads us to look at a utility class that you may not have noticed: Question: I am encountering a strange problem with the name checking functionality when creating ParameterFilterElements. The following code snippet creates two ParameterFilterElements with all identical settings except for a slight naming difference: public void ParameterFilterElementError( Document doc ) { ICollection ceilingCategory = new List(); ceilingCategory.Add( doc.Settings.Categories.get_Item( BuiltInCategory.OST_Ceilings ).Id ); using( Transaction tr =... Read more →

Architecture Mismatch Warning Disabler Update

The default Visual Studio settings will generate a processor architecture mismatch warning when compiling a Revit 2014 or 2015 add-in. Last year, I implemented a utility named DisableMismatchWarning.exe to recursively disable this warning in all projects in all subfolders of the current directory. Now I just happened to receive a new sample add-in project from a developer for testing that was not recognised by this utility, so I implemented an update for it. Before getting to that, let me share... 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 →

RvtVa3c – Revit Va3c Generic AEC Viewer JSON Export

When you read this, I will already be sitting on the plane back from New York to Switzerland. Before leaving, though, I wanted to add some more explanations on the extremely fruitful work we accomplished this weekend. I am very happy and grateful that we spontaneously formed such a wonderful team and worked together so enthusiastically, pleasantly and effectively. Most of all, I enjoyed the companionship, competence and professionality of my closest teammate Matt Mason of Imaginit Technologies. In the... Read more →

Project Solon and BipChecker for Revit 2015 on GitHub

One of the handful of Revit database exploration tools that I use on a regular basis is BipChecker, the Revit built-in parameter checker, so that is a pretty obvious candidate for migration to Revit 2015... see below. Before I get to that, let me mention some new Revit energy analysis functionality that you might want to check out: Simple Interactive Energy Analysis in Revit with Project Solon Project Solon beta arrives in Revit, providing more interactive energy analysis results, the... Read more →

Add-In Wizards for Revit 2015

I updated my Visual Studio Revit add-in wizards for Revit 2015. The 2015 version generates the same boilerplate code as the reliable old Revit 2014 one and its update did, which can be simply deleted if not needed. I selflessly also implemented and tested the Visual Basic version right away. Revit Add-in Wizard Customisation As I keep pointing out, it is important to understand how easy it is to modify the wizards for your own needs, and make copies with... Read more →

IFC Exporter Open Source Wiki

As you certainly know, the Revit IFC exporter is open source and available from the sourceforge IFC Exporter for Revit project repository. It has now been updated to Revit 2015, obviously, covers import as well as export, and enhanced with a FAQ wiki to address the most frequently asked questions. Below, I would like to present both the main IFC exporter project description and its new FAQ. Autodesk Revit Wikipedia Entry Before getting to that, let me briefly add that... Read more →

Hackergarten Meetup

In order to become more immersed and fluent in web and mobile technologies, I participated in the Hackergarten meetup in Basel last week. We were a dozen people, mostly experienced in large-scale modern web and database technologies. The suggested topics were legion, including WebRTC, Spike/Chatapp, Node Webkit, JS tools, CouchDB, Ionic Framework, High scalability, Guice, Gradle plugin, Android slide show, Polymar JS (similar to Angular). I sat down with three other guys with the goal of exploring PouchDB. It is... Read more →

WPF Fill Pattern Viewer Control Benchmark

I recently presented Victor Chekalin's WPF control for viewing Revit fill patterns. In his comment, Victor already mentioned some worries about performance of this control and his intention to create a simple benchmark to monitor it. Well, here it is. At the same time, I also took the opportunity to migrate the fill pattern control to Revit 2015. Migrate the Fill Pattern Viewer Control to Revit 2015 The migration to the Revit 2015 API was extremely straightforward, just like the... Read more →

Getting Serious Adding New Materials from List

Here is a post on some serious usability enhancements for the AddMaterials add-in, which reads a list of material properties from an Excel spreadsheet and generates Revit material elements accordingly. It was originally presented for Revit 2011, reimplemented for Revit 2014, and enhanced with improved error messages and reporting soon after. Until now, it was more of a programming example than an actual usable tool, but that is starting to change, thanks to a number of enhancements by Alexander Ignatovich,... Read more →

WPF Fill Pattern Viewer Control

Today, I present a useful stand-alone WPF control for viewing Revit fill patterns, originally implemented by Victor Checkalin, Виктор Чекалин, shared with us by Alexander Ignatovich, Александр Игнатович, of Investicionnaya Venchurnaya Companiya, as part of further enhancements for the AddMaterial add-in. The rest of his new enhancements will be discussed as soon as possible in a future post. The AddMaterials add-in reads a list of material properties from an Excel spreadsheet and generates Revit material elements accordingly. The input data... Read more →

RevitLookup for Revit 2015

My first post dealing with Revit 2015 is dedicated to RevitLookup, the most important Revit database exploration tool, both for developers and interested non-developers. This is particularly urgent, since RevitLookup no longer is included in the standard Revit SDK (software development kit). It is now available from the RevitLookup GitHub repository instead. I created a preliminary version of RevitLookup for the Revit 2015 Meridian pre-release, just to ensure that everybody who needs access to this tool has it available right... Read more →

Category Analysis with and without Python

Here is a useful approach for analysing categories by Alexander Ignatovich of Investicionnaya Venchurnaya Companiya, originating from the following query: Question: How can I check that a given family is an annotation? For example, I have a family with BuiltInCategory.OST_GridHeads family category. Revit knows that this is an annotation category and shows it inside the corresponding group in the project browser. However, there are no annotation "super groups" in the BuiltInCategory enumerable, and family.FamilyCategory.Parent is null. Answer: I am not... Read more →

Adding New Materials from List Enhancements

A weekend post, for a change. There is just too much going on! I recently reimplemented the AddMaterials add-in for Revit 2014, updating the simple little Revit 2011 system to generate new materials in a Revit project based on a list of required material properties stored in an Excel spreadsheet. Luke submitted a comment on that, asking: Question: I have built the solution and created an XLSX file. The add-in runs and says that it has added materials, but I... Read more →

Another Balloon Tip Implementation

Alexander Ignatovich, or Игнатович Александр, responds to the recent discussion on using balloon tips in Revit and says: I want to share another solution for balloon tips for custom messages, without using the unsupported AdWindows library. Just see the project attached in YetAnotherBalloonTip.zip :-) Alexander's solution provides three different sample commands: Simple balloon Warning balloon Balloon from another thread The implementation is packaged in a separate self-contained class named NotifyBox, so instantiating a simple balloon tip is really very simple... Read more →

Adding New Materials from List Updated

Back in the year 2010, I discussed a simple little system based on a Revit add-in named AddMaterials to generate new materials in a Revit project based on a list of required material properties stored in an Excel spreadsheet. The input data includes: Material Name Code Title Strength Graphics RGB colour values Transparency Surface pattern Cut pattern Identity Filter criteria Descriptive information Custom parameters All the further workflow details are described in the original post, of course. The add-in was... Read more →

Wrangling Revisions with Ruby

Here is a write-up by Andy Holmes, Integration Specialist at OPX design consultancy on a Ruby project that uses a lot of different Revit API features, e.g., revisions on sheet, DMU updaters, Idling and document events, and creating a Ruby 'add-in' by using an application-level macro that has no macros in it. This write-up will soon be made available on the redesigned OPX website, and the code is already freely available on GitHub. Andy adds that Mat is colleague who... Read more →

Daylighting Extension and Splitting with Taps

Here is a quick update on the status of the daylighting analysis technology preview and some helpful advice for anyone trying to split a duct or pipe with taps. Daylighting Analysis The Daylighting Analysis for Revit technology preview free analysis period has been extended until March 31 or until a commercial version becomes available, whichever comes first. Find out more and download the updated plug-in from the Daylighting Analysis for Revit Autodesk Labs page. Splitting a Duct or Pipe with... Read more →

Deleting Unnamed Non-Hosting Reference Planes

Once upon a time, while teaching a Revit API class, the training participants identified a problem that was simple enough to be used as a filtered element collector learning example and did something useful at the same time: deleting reference planes not hosting any elements, implemented as the stand-alone external command DeleteUnnamedNonHostingReferencePlanes. It deletes all reference planes that have not been named and are not hosting any elements. Here is another thread discussing filtering reference planes and explaining the use... Read more →

Starting to Clean Up For the Break

I am starting to clear up some open issues before the break. Here are a few that I can handle right here and now: Autodesk University classes ready for viewing and download Building Performance Analysis update Daylighting Analysis Tool for Revit update I will obviously not be able to magically transform the entire backlog of interesting topics I still wish to share and discuss. Still, I am continuously learning to be active and still take things easy, do what I... Read more →

Driving CNC Fabrication and Shared Parameters

The topic of CNC fabrication of Revit BIM elements is continuing to grow in popularity. As you already know, I published the ExportWallboard add-in to automatically isolate and export wall parts individually to DXF for CNC fabrication, then enhanced, renamed and published it on GitHub as ExportCncFab for William Spier's Autodesk University class on Design to Fabrication. Those discussions were explicitly related to CNC fabrication up front. Numerous other topics here are also useful in that context. I was unable... Read more →

Security, Framing Cross Section Analyser and REX

My topic for today is structural cross section analysis, i.e. determination of the cross section profile of beam, columns, braces, etc., and the various completely different approaches one can take to achieve this. I also demonstrate how to make use of some of the powerful functionality provided by the REX toolkit without building my entire application on top of the REX framework. Before getting to that, though, let me mention where we are with the DevDays conference tour: DevDays in... Read more →

Nightingale M3U and Denormalized Filename Characters

Here is a post addressing a Mac denormalized filename character issue, music players on Mac and Python file manipulation, so nothing to do with the Revit API. It appears that Songbird is dead, Nightingale is its successor, and nothing much else is happening on that front, neither now nor ever. I guess Nightingale will die a natural death too one of these days, but I am still using it so far anyway. Just like Songbird, Nightingale does not provide any... Read more →

DevDay@au Chronicle Estorage View Depth Sound of Noise

Monday was the first day at Autodesk University in Las Vegas, dedicated to the forward-looking confidential DevDays conference with the main focus on the rEvolution – where desktop meets the cloud. In spite of the confidential nature of the information discussed, I am sure I can share an at least an outline of the content here in public with you. I'll also touch on a couple of other interesting topics that cropped up on the past few days, such as... Read more →

RoomEditorApp Idling and Benchmarking Timer

I solved my two RoomEditorApp Idling issues! They were especially worrying due to the fact that I am planning to present this application in my Autodesk university class DV1736 on Cloud-Based, Real-Time, Round-Trip, 2D Revit Model Editing on Any Mobile Device. By the way, you should now enrol in the AU classes you are interested in – unless you already did :-) Go to the AU class catalogue, sign in, click 'View All Classes', use the filters or keyword search... Read more →

Localised Unit Abbreviations

I recently discussed how to generate unit abbreviations, both using a hard coded list and automatically generating them from the UnitSymbolType enumeration values. I implemented the CmdDutAbbreviation command in The Building Coder samples to test these abbreviations, and also enhanced it to display the Display Unit Type to Unit Types mapping that we added in the meantime. Victor Chekalin, or Виктор Чекалин, reacted to this analysis and adds: Thank you for your investigation. But... There is a big 'but' :-)... Read more →

Multi-Version Visual Studio Revit Add-In Wizard

Developers often ask how to support multiple versions of a Revit add-in from the same codebase. Many have implemented solutions for this using various Visual Studio project settings. Alexander Ignatovich of Investicionnaya Venchurnaya Companiya went one step further and implemented a version of the Visual Studio Revit add-in wizard that automatically generates an add-in skeleton supporting both Revit 2013 and 2014 in the same Visual Studio project. He is very kindly sharing is with us here, saying: I have one... Read more →

Intimate Revit Database Exploration with the Python Shell

I keep repeating the importance of being able to explore the Revit database model efficiently to understand what is going on. This can even be important for end users, and is certainly much more so for developers. The first and foremost important tool is obviously RevitLookup. The BipChecker is less important and yet also handy for exploring element parameters. The disadvantage of these two is that they only explore existing values provided by properties and parameters. They do not offer... Read more →

ExportCncFab on GitHub and RevitLookup Update

I am in a hurry, still not finding time to prepare my AU classes, and lots going on. I published an add-in named ExportWallboard to automatically isolate and export wall parts individually to DXF for CNC fabrication back in March, still for Revit 2013, at the time. That utility is in use, was renamed to ExportCncFab and has enjoyed some further enhancement since, such as: Support for export to SAT as well as DXF A beautiful little external application to... Read more →

RevitLookup on GitHub and Invitation to Collaborate

I sincerely hope that everybody reading this is aware of the power and importance of RevitLookup, has already installed it, and is an avid user. If you do not know what I am talking about, please read these previous posts on the topic, noting that it was previously named RvtMgdDbg, short for 'Revit managed debugging tool': RvtMgdDbg Fixing RvtMgdDbg for MEP Connectors RvtMgdDbg for Revit 2010 RevitLookup Update Units and RevitLookup Getting Started with the Revit API RevitLookup is currently... Read more →

The Dynamo Revit Unit Test Framework

I have repeatedly underlined the importance of unit testing, and recently presented the RvtUnit project enabling the use of the NUnit unit testing tool for Revit add-ins. The Dynamo team now presents another one; in case you have not already heard of and explored it, Dynamo is an exciting visual programming tool on top of Revit. The best explanation of Dynamo is provided in the Dynamo GitHub repository. Much of the discussion and suggestions for new features etc., is happening... Read more →

Using the Built-In Revit AcGe Functionality

Anyone who ever used the AutoCAD API for geometrical purposes must be enamoured with AcGe. On the other hand, the Revit geometry library is pretty meagre in comparison. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to use all that powerful AcGe functionality in Revit as well? Actually, if you take a look at the support DLLs included in the Revit main executable directory, AcGe is obviously present: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit 2014 > dir *acge* Directory of C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit 2014 02/05/2013 12:52... Read more →

Text File Driven Automatic Placement of Family Instances

My colleague Emmanuel Di Giacomo recently asked me for an application to automatically place Revit family instances in a project at a list of X, Y, Z coordinates read from a text file. A similar add-in was already published for Revit 2011 at Revit Today. The user interface is minimal: This form enables the following simple and effective workflow to achieve a lot of functionality in very few lines of code, significantly aided and abetted by the combo box DataSource... Read more →