The Building Coder

Forge at AU and Open Source Property Access

Today, we take a look at a fix for the RvtVa3c custom exporter and a Forge issue related to Revit property access – Pull metadata from RVT in BIM 360 – Forge at AU class recordings – RvtVa3c updated and issues fixed... Read more →

Exporting RVT BIM to JSON, WebGL and Forge

I am happy to say that I returned safe and sound to Switzerland from my travels for the Forge DevCon and Cloud Accelerator. Since then, I rounded off the hierarchical MEP system exporter to a JSON graph for interaction with it in the Forge viewer, worked on an update of the ADN JSON mesh exporter and helped my son Christopher getting started with C# scripting to drive audio effects for professional spatialized sound design for computer games – More TraverseAllSystems updates – CustomExporterAdnMeshJson updates – ADN JSON Exporter Alternatives to View RVT in WebGL – vA3C – The Forge Viewer – Getting started with Unity C# scripting – Opendesk at Autodesk Forge Accelerator Barcelona... Read more →

Duplicate Add-In GUID and Driving Revit from Outside

Lots of stuff going on; I have a hard time keeping up. Due to popular request, I updated the RvtVa3c readme. I am continuing to answer issues on the Revit API discussion forum as well as ADN cases. I am struggling to find time for The 3D Web Coder... One ADN case that I answered fits in very nicely with a forum suggestion provided by Arnošt Löbel. Here are my topics for now: Duplicate add-in GUID Driving Revit from outside... 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 →

Keyboard Shortcuts and Other News

A couple of questions on stackoverflow and the Revit API discussion forum prompted me to pick up the age-old issue of keyboard shortcuts again. Plus, I'd like to point out some news from the AEC Hackathon in New York and the AECbytes newsletter: AEC Hackathon in New York AECbytes newsletter How to programmatically retrieve keyboard shortcuts How to assign a keyboard shortcut to an external command How to programmatically create a keyboard shortcut AEC Hackathon in New York I attended... Read more →

3D Viewing, vA3C and RevitLookup Updates

Here are some GitHub updates on the vA3C and RevitLookup projects, and 3D viewing in general: vA3C project going full steam ahead vA3C hacker R1 is up Rendering an element in 3D Small RevitLookup update vA3C Project Going Full Steam Ahead The WebGL and three.js based AEC 3D viewer project vA3C is going ahead at full steam, driven mainly by Theo Armour. vA3C is a free, open source viewer and navigator for a variety of file types. The most recent... Read more →

Berlin Hackathon Results, 3D Viewer and Web News

We completed the Berlin hackathon last weekend, and many other noteworthy and exciting things are going on, concerning the Revit API, the 3D web viewers, web services and more: Berlin hackathon projects and winners Avoid unnecessary unit conversion 3D viewer news AutoCAD as a web service Collada STL ADVA export settings RvtVa3c update Berlin Hackathon Projects and Winners The Berlin hackathon completed and the winners were announced last weekend. I took notes of four teams' project presentations: US4, us four... 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 →

Three.js AEC Viewer Progress on Two Fronts

Along with our everyday workload, my colleagues and I are busy playing with the View and Data API and the powerful WebGL based viewer that is on the verge of release. Meanwhile, very significant progress has also been made on the public domain and open source vA3C three.js based AEC viewer. The Autodesk View and Data API WebGL Based Viewer I mentioned that I presented the Autodesk View and Data API and viewer technology at the July basel.js meetup. My... Read more →

RvtVa3c Assembly Resolver

One of the RvtVa3c implementation aspects that I mentioned was the fact that we ran into some problems using the standard .NET Microsoft System.Runtime.Serialization.Json.DataContractJsonSerializer class and chose to replace it with the more reliable Json.NET component instead. Serialisation is required by our early decision to define and generate the three.js JSON file format by representing all the required objects, their properties and relationships by a set of C# classes. We instantiate and populate these classes in our custom exporter context... Read more →