The Building Coder

Forge Formats, Webinars and Fusion 360 Client API

I updated the WebGL and Forge introduction for BIM programming and its GitHub source for the presentations in the coming days at the RTC Revit Technology Conference Europe and the ISEPBIM Forge and BIM workshops at ISEP, in Porto, implemented two little curl wrapper scripts to help me list the supported file formats, explored why they changed and updated the hackathon webinar overview. Before getting to that, I'll also highlight a helpful note by Christian on how to access the 'Symbolic Representation' setting – 'Symbolic Representation' setting parameter – Forge intro for BIM programming – cURL wrapper scripts to list Forge file formats – Updated Forge file formats – Forge hackathon webinar series and Fusion 360 Client API recording... Read more →

UnitUtils Converting Units for Unit Weight

Here comes a quick clarification of the units used for the UnitWeight built-in parameter PHY_MATERIAL_PARAM_UNIT_WEIGHT. One example usage is to calculate the total weight of rebars in a project... Read more →

Dynamic Model Updater Tutorial and Wizard Update

The Forge DevCon is over and was a great success. I am really excited to see where our paths will lead us in the near future as we continue to improve the connections between the desktop, Revit and BIM to the cloud and move forward towards freeing our BIM data. I published pointers to all the 'Free your BIM data' resources yesterday. Our main topics today are completely different and purely Revit API related – Updated Visual Studio Revit Add-in Wizards – RevitPythonShell Dynamic Model Updater Tutorial... Read more →

The pyRevit IronPython Script Library

Two weeks ago, Maltezc raised a question on the availability of a version of RevitLookup for Python. I am not aware of any Python version of RevitLookup, but you can certainly call into RevitLookup from RevitPythonShell. Maltezc pointed out the pyRevit IronPython script library. Ehsan Iran-Nejad, pyRevit creator and maintainer, now wrote a blog post describing this powerful and popular collection... 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 →

Tracking Element Modification

How to determine and track element modification? I implemented a solution! – Two approaches – Task analysis – Modification tracker – Creating an element state snapshot – Determining which elements to track – Implementation – Geometrical comparison – String formatting – Retrieve solid vertices – GetTrackedElements – retrieve elements of interest – GetElementState – store element state – Creating a database state snapshot – Report differences – External command mainline Execute method – Sample runs – Demo recording – Download... Read more →

Shared Project Parameter GUID Reporter

I am still busy on the Revit API discussion forum, when not involved in other important seasonal preparations. Now let's look at the overdue solution to determine the GUID of a shared project parameter – Issue – Implementation – Download – Discussion – Solution. A long discussion between CoderBoy, Scott Wilson and Ning Zhou on reporting on project parameter definitions – need GUIDs was resolved back in 2013 and never published... Read more →

Flatten All Elements to DirectShape

I am still busy preparing my presentations for Autodesk University and making slow progress due to handling too many Revit API issues in between. And blogging, as well. Here is a new cool sample contributed by Nikolay Shulga, Senior Principal Engineer in the Revit development team. In his own words – Name: Flatten – Motivation: I wanted to see whether DirectShapes could be used to lock down a Revit design – remove most intelligence, make it read-only, perhaps improve performance – Spec: converts full Revit elements into DirectShapes that hold the same shape and have the same categories – Implementation: see below – Cool API aspects: copy element’s geometry and use it elsewhere – Cool ways to use it: lock down your project; make a copy of your element for presentation/export – How it can be enhanced: the sky is the limit... Read more →

WorksharingUtils

Rudolf 'Revitalizer' Honke frequently requested better documentation of the Revit API `*Utils` classes, e.g., when he pointed out the handy utility classes back in 2013. This is still an interesting and somewhat poorly documented area in the Revit API, as we can see from the discussion below – WorksharingUtils and the WorksharingTooltipInfo class – Ten interesting C# features – A new acronym – TL;DR... Read more →

Fill Pattern Viewer Fix and Add Materials for 2016

@kfpopeye discovered and fixed an issue with complex fill patterns in the venerable old WPF Fill Pattern Viewer Control, part of the AddMaterials Revit add-in to load new materials into a project based on a list defined in an Excel spreadsheet – Original implementation for Revit 2011 – Reimplementation for Revit 2014 – Improved error messages and reporting – WPF FillPattern viewer control – Check for already loaded materials – FillPattern viewer benchmarking... Read more →

Lunar Eclipse and Custom File Properties

Today, let's look at a Windows API question that can be of interest handling Revit documents as well, and mention my night out to watch the – Lunar Eclipse – Custom File Properties... Read more →

Revit Add-In Wizard GitHub Installer

I recently mentioned the unrestricted VendorId in Revit 2016, and pointed out that I would like to update the Visual Studio Revit add-in wizards accordingly. I now went ahead and did so, adding a couple of other enhancements as well along the way – oh, and I did some work on putting my personal calendar online, as well: Sharing a calendar via GCal, Google API, and GitHub Pages. Visual Studio Revit add-in wizards on GitHub. Updated VendorId tag value. Wizard... Read more →

Revit Future and Saving User Configuration Settings

I encountered the need and implemented solutions to save user configuration data several times over in the past. Today, prompted by a recent query, I'll point out two of them, and some other exciting and interesting stuff as well: Anthony Hauck on Futures for Revit. The Most Popular Programming Languages 2015. Saving User Configuration Settings. Text Format Configuration File Storage and Parsing. .NET XML Configuration File Storage and Parsing. Anthony Hauck on Futures for Revit BIMThoughts is a podcast platform... Read more →

Dynamo, Centroid & Volume Calculation Migration Blitz

My French colleague Olivier Bayle, co-author of the French AEC-related Village BIM blog, just re-raised the topic of my old solid centroid and volume calculation add-in. Let's also point out one or two of the numerous topics we tackled in the past few days on the Revit API discussion forum: Graphically displaying the centre of gravity using Dynamo GetCentroid on GitHub and blitz migration across four Revit API releases Finding the orientation of welded pipe outlets How to set the... Read more →

ADN Labs Xtra, Multi-Version Add-Ins and CNC Direct

Let's discuss some more Revit add-in migration aspects and yet another completed migration task: ADN Revit API training labs Xtra migration Multi-version add-ins and CNC Direct ADN Revit API Training Labs Xtra Migration I recently mentioned that the official ADN Revit API Labs Training Material for Revit 2016 is available from the Revit Developer Centre and the Revit API Training GitHub repository. They are used for our standard two- or three-day hands-on Revit API introduction training courses. They are also... Read more →

CNC Direct – Export Wall Parts to DXF and SAT

I implemented the Revit ExportCncFab add-in back in 2013 to export Revit wall parts to DXF or SAT for CNC fabrication. The full source code, Visual Studio solution and add-in manifest lives in the ExportCncFab GitHub repository. The project was prompted by William Spier, who recently published a nice 12-minute YouTube video Revit to CNC Direct describing and demonstrating its practical use and application: In William's words: "Asked Jeremy to write a DLL that allows users to export multiple objects... Read more →

Geometry Creation and Line Intersection Exceptions

Today, let's look at some geometry related questions, a small enhancement of the line intersection we discussed two days ago, NURB spline and solid creation: Creating a NURB spline GeometryCreationUtilities, moving and copying solids Line intersection enhancements Built-in parameter checker for Revit 2016 1001 discussion forum posts Creating a NURB Spline This question was raised by anarchyfree in the Revit API discussion thread on a NurbSpline creation error: Question: I'm working on a Revit plugin that in part accepts curves... Read more →

RevitLookup in Python Shell and Multi-Release Solution

Here is some exciting news from Daren Thomas on RevitLookup and the Revit Python Shell. The Python and Ruby shells came up a couple of times recently, and I also mentioned Daren's initial thoughts on making the RevitLookup snoop functionality easily accessible from within the interactive Python IDE: Curved wall elevation profile implementation in Python Live development Revit 2016 Python shell and RevitLookup incorporation Revit 2016 Ruby shell This idea has now come to fruition, and more easily than one... Read more →

Transferring a Wall Type

Let's look at transferring a wall type from one document to another. In fact, we already did so, way back in 2011, as an example about how to possibly approach the task of at least partially programmatically transferring project standards. Now Parley submitted a comment on that, saying: Question: We could still really use this... This post originally was from 2011. Any update on API access for this tool? Answer: Glad to hear it sounds useful to you. Well, nothing... Read more →

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 →