The Building Coder

Set a Suitable View for Family Instance Placement

Matt Taylor of WSP raised an issue related to the use of the PromptForFamilyInstancePlacement method, now that API access is also possible in the project browser view. He also went right ahead to suggest and implement a solution: Question: One of the new features of the Revit 2014 API is the possibility to select elements within the Project Browser view. If the Project Browser view is active, selecting a ribbon control that uses PromptForFamilyInstancePlacement will fail because the user will... Read more →

Issue Using a Preview Control in a Macro

Here is a recent surprising little issue on using the Revit PreviewControl widget in the macro environment, brought up by Stephen Faust of Revolution Design: Question: I would like to use the preview control to display previews of parts of the model. However, whenever I try to create a preview control it gives me the error "Revit does not support more than one preview control and there is already one active": I have searched online and I found the UI... Read more →

Exporting Image and Setting a Default 3D View Orientation

Here is a nice little explanation by Alexander Ignatovich of Investicionnaya Venchurnaya Companiya (that sounds like a venture investment company to me) on how to export an image file for a family or project. One issue that cropped up was how to set the default view orientation for a newly created 3D view: Question: In versions prior to Revit 2014, I used this code to create a new 3D view with a default view direction: var direction = new XYZ(... Read more →

Determining Absolutely All Visible and Hidden Elements

Yesterday, I discussed the view filter API. One issue mentioned that was not completely answered was the following: Question 3: I would like to export only visible objects. Using the element IsHidden method reports whether it was hidden using the Hide in View > Elements menu option, but ignores Hide in View filters, and so does the IsHiddenElementOrCategory method. How can my application determine exactly what the user actually sees on the screen? Our customers obviously expect this functionality for... Read more →

View Filter API

One long-standing developer wish list item that was fulfilled by the Revit 2014 API is the ability to access, add and control the view filters listed in the visibility dialogue. The Revit API now provides the following methods supporting this: View.AddFilter() View.SetFilterVisibility() View.SetFilterOverrides() Here are several variations of the request for this functionality that help understand the need and new possibilities by highlighting the numerous ways in which it can be used: Question 1: We want to programmatically achieve what... Read more →

Language Independent Section View Type Id Retrieval

I already discussed changing the viewport type and mentioned Steve Mycynek's all-encompassing AU class CP3133 Using the Revit Schedule and View APIs explaining everything else there is to know about the topic of generating new views. Here is an important language independence enhancement for this provided by Håkan Wikemar of AEC AB, who asked: Question: I ran into a little problem trying to create some section views, in which a view type element id has to be specified: NyViewSectionB =... Read more →

Attributes, Relationships and Other Stuff

Before entering this wonderful new week, I have some unfinished business left over from the last one. Last week I returned from a short holiday and was inundated with developer cases, some of which I would still like to report on, or the results will presumably be lost forever, or at least until the next person runs into the same issue. I hope to prevent this here and now before starting with anything new. Let us therefore take a quick... Read more →

Setting the Exact Same Location for two Views on a Sheet

A recent developer query requests a method to define the exact same location for two views on a sheet. This was possible to achieve in Revit 2013 and previous releases, and some related API behaviour apparently changed in Revit 2014. A simple but clever trick enables achieving this reliably in Revit 2014 as well. Question: I noticed that sometimes when I place views on a sheet the location is somewhat shifted. I have a Revit sample model and C# add-in... Read more →

Animation and the DisplacementElement Class

A recent developer query asks about animating elements in the Revit model and updating the display within a loop in the external command to show the step-by-step displacements. This provides a welcome opportunity to highlight another one of the Revit 2014 SDK Samples: The DisplacementElementAnimation SDK Sample One of the very visually impressive Revit 2014 API samples is the DisplacementElementAnimation application. It automatically animates groups of structural building members in any Revit BIM, proceeding sequentially from bottom level to top.... Read more →

Effortless Extensible Storage

Today we proudly present an exciting and powerful extensible storage utility class library by Victor Chekalin. I'll also add some other assorted items at the end: Extensible storage extension Example 1 – save integer value to an element Example 2 – map field and sub-entity value Extensible storage extension conclusion Zoom and pan in Revit 2013 preview control Display real-time interactive element properties Extensible Storage Extension I think everyone of us has used shared parameters to save custom data in... Read more →

Copy and Paste API Applications and Modeless Assertion

Here is a detailed description of one of the most exciting Revit 2014 API features that you should have heard about by now and promises numerous uses, prompted by a question from a developer on duplicating views from one document to another. Another couple of uses of it cropped up in the past, so it seems like an overview is called for: Duplicating a view from one document to another Solving the non-unique unique id problem Managing materials in adsklib... Read more →

Revit 2014 SDK and Visual Debugging Tools

Two hot topics for today, especially the first: Updated Revit 2014 SDK Visual debugging tools Updated Revit 2014 SDK An updated Revit 2014 SDK is live on the ADN Open Revit developer page now: www.autodesk.com/developrevit This version includes RevitLookup and the AddInManager! Visual Debugging Tools Rudolf Honke of Mensch und Maschine acadGraph GmbH discovered a glitch in the definition of the room solids in one of the standard sample RVT project files. Rudi says: When testing VRML exporter with Revit... Read more →

Grouping Schedule Headers and How to Do Something

Here is my first real Revit 2014 post, sharing some code friendlily provided by David Robison of Design Master showing how to use the ViewSchedule.GroupHeaders method. Using the ViewSchedule GroupHeaders Method Question: I am trying to call ViewSchedule.GroupHeaders, and it keeps throwing an unhandled argument exception saying "Headers could not be grouped. Parameter name: right". Answer: Yes, this issue has been raised in the past and a few solutions were suggested. First case The ViewSchedule.GroupHeaders produces the argument exception mentioned... Read more →

Setting up your ViewOrientation3D

Here is a contribution from Mario Guttman of CASE, who already made various contributions here in the past. He says: I have been purging my 2013 code of deprecated functions in preparation for my 2014 upgrade. One group of statements I have needed to replace are the view creations. They were previously using the Document.Create.NewView3D method and needed converting to the View3D.CreateIsometric with a separate ViewOrientation3D object defining the view direction. Typically, in these kind of cases, I just search... Read more →

Rename View by Matching Elevation Tag with Room

Today is the last morning meeting with my European DevTech colleagues here in Brittany, and time to travel back to Switzerland. Before leaving, here is a useful real-world productivity tool by Trevor Taylor of ZGF, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects LLP, with his own description of the task and its solution: The task I want to address is to match interior elevation tags with the rooms they fall inside. This is used to track back and rename the corresponding views. Naming... Read more →

Parameters versus Properties

In his comment on reading material asset data, Alexander Buschmann points out that this same information can be accessed without retrieving, reading and converting the data directly from the undocumented built-in parameters. Instead and more comfortably, you can use the following official properties on the appropriate classes: Material material = null; foreach( Material mat in e.Materials ) { material = mat; break; } PropertySetElement pse = doc.GetElement( material.StructuralAssetId ) as PropertySetElement; StructuralAsset asset = pse.GetStructuralAsset(); double a = asset.WoodBendingStrength; double... Read more →

Changing Viewport Type

Here is a question on setting the type of an element by using the built-in ELEM_FAMILY_AND_TYPE_PARAM parameter value, explored by Bettina Zimmermann of NTI Cadcenter A/S: Question: I'm inserting viewports on sheets and I'd like to change the viewport type to my own defined type. How can I this programmatically? By default, the API call creates a new viewport with type "Title w Line". I'd like to change that to e.g. my own type "Test". Here is my own self-defined... Read more →

Set Detail Curve Visibility

Mostly, the Revit API limits an add-in to pretty high-level operations, encapsulating and protecting the parametric BIM from reckless modifications. For the nonce, here is a little bit of nitty-gritty bit manipulation anyway, in a utility method provided by Scott Conover: Question: Why is there no DetailCurve.SetVisibility method exposed, similar to ModelCurves.SetVisibility? The UI has this functionality, and I would find very good use for it in reinforcement detailing. I want to programmatically create a detail family representing a certain... Read more →

Installing a Macro and Closing the Active Document

You can close an open Revit document programmatically. Unfortunately, though, this only works for all except the last one. People keep running into this issue, of course. It even motivated René Gerlach to implement a workaround using SendKeys.SendWait to send an Alt-F4 keystroke to Revit to close the active window, and Arnošt Löbel to warn gravely against its use and even publish a Windows message workaround disclaimer. Well, happily, such an adventurous workaround is not at all required. Another workaround... Read more →

Accessing all Elements in a Schedule

Here is a quick little post, with a surprisingly short and simple answer to a short and seemingly difficult Revit API question. Before getting to that, I will just mention that I arrived safe and sound in Paris for a developer conference here. I had a walk in the sunset on the north bank of the Seine from the Gare de Lyon along the industrial areas on Quai de Bercy and crossed the river over the new-built Pont National to... Read more →

AU Classes on Python, UI, Server and Framework APIs

Thursday was another very full and fruitful day at AU. I gave my third and last class, the most exciting one in my eyes, on some UI and integration aspects. I was unable to attend Iffat May's class introducing Python and using it in Revit and Vasari via RevitPythonShell, but I love her material so much I am including it anyway. Adam Nagy presented a class addressing cloud and mobile development and the Revit Server API. Finally, Arnošt Löbel provided... Read more →

AU Classes on the View, MEP and Link APIs

Wednesday was my first normal and full AU day, after completing the developer conference and DevLab activities. I was able to attend two interesting classes held by Revit API developers Steven Mycynek and Arnošt Löbel, and present my own Revit MEP API one. Here they are in chronological order: CP3133 Using the Revit Schedule and View APIs by Steven Mycynek CP4108 Revit MEP Programming: All Systems Go by Jeremy Tammik CP3455 Managing Revit Links with the Revit API by Arnošt... Read more →

Geometry Object Subcategory

I received and have started installing and learning to use my new laptop, which is a Mac, I'm finishing up my preparations for Autodesk University, and I'm working on preparations for upcoming developer conferences, so you can imagine there is rather a lot to do and 24 hours per day seem very limiting. I love the Unix shell! Goodbye, DOS box. Thank goodness my colleague Joe Ye answered a case that I found interesting and would like to share with... Read more →

Drive Revit through a WCF Service

Today, a special titbit for you: How can I access Revit functionality from an external process? As we have underlined many times in the past, the Revit API does not support any kind of asynchronous access. The Idling event, however, provides a possibility to work around this limitation. Daren Thomas, the author or RevitPythonShell, even presented a neat and clean pattern for semi asynchronous Idling API access. Now Victor Chekalin, aka Виктор Чекалин, presents another very neat sample providing such... Read more →

UIView, Windows Coordinates, ReferenceIntersector and My Own Tooltip

Here is my well-meant contribution to making this the most exciting Wednesday of your entire week. For the first time in history, the Revit 2013 UIView class provides a possibility to convert back and forth between Revit model coordinates and Windows device screen points. I imagined making use of that right away when I read about the UIView class, and mentioned it when discussing UIView and Windows device coordinates. I am still a bit surprised that I have not yet... Read more →

DivideParts in F# and Line Styles

My internet connection died last night. After worrying and testing quite a bit last night and this morning, I laid a temporary cable from my neighbour's router. Shortly after I finished, my own connection came back up again, after about 14 hours downtime. Murphy's law remains valid, as always. Very reassuring :-) There is lots of building work going on nearby, so probably they broke it and fixed it with no explanations given. Anyway, I am back to normal now... Read more →

Parts, Assemblies, PartUtils and DivideParts

Let's end this eventful week with another big and imporant topic that we've neglected for much too long. So far, I presented just one single example of using the PartUtils class, and other information provided on it by a Google search is also awfully scarce. Piotr Zurek of CADPRO Systems Ltd improved the situation by raising and promptly answering the following question: Question: I wonder whether you have any sample code showing how to use the PartUtils.DivideParts method. I'm trying... Read more →

Set View Section Box to Match Scope Box

Here is a case that I really like, demonstrating two interesting aspects: How to retrieve the exact geometric location, size and orientation of the scope box. How to set the exact geometric location, size and orientation of the 3D view section box. In fact, we show how to use the manually adjusted scope box to define the view section box, i.e. specifying exactly how the model is cut in the current 3D view. I actually already showed how to set... Read more →

Titbits of the Week

Here are a couple of things to round off this warm week (a least here) that I think might be of interest to us all: Identical document GUIDs Journal file path Opening a background document Creating a perspective view Identical Document GUIDs Every Revit document now has a GUID, which can be retrieved from the UniqueId property on the ProjectInformation singleton class. It would be very useful if that could be used to reliably and uniquely distinguish and identify documents.... 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 →

View of NewGroup Duplicated Elements

I already mentioned that you can work around the lack of programmatic creation possibilities for some element types by grouping existing ones, creating new instances of that group, and then ungrouping it again. One question that came up in that context is what view the new group appears in: Question: I am using code like this to duplicate one or more elements: void CreateGroup( Document doc, ICollection ids, XYZ offset ) { Group group = doc.Create.NewGroup( ids ); LocationPoint location... Read more →

OBJ Model Exporter with Colours

I discussed the first take of my OBJ exporter last week, still lacking colour support. Adding colours turned out to be more complex than I had expected, and the result as it currently stands includes a couple of kludges, I'm afraid. Still, for a quick hack it does a decent job of getting a rough idea across. For instance, here is the result of exporting the basic sample project rac_basic_sample_project.rvt included in the Revit product distribution: The resulting OBJ file... Read more →

OBJ Model Export Considerations

As I already said, I am getting going with the cloud, and my first project is to export a Revit model to the Wavefront OBJ file format, which seems to be pretty standard and compact. My exploration so far led to a number of observations and other issues: Cloud and mobile DevBlog Selecting model elements OBJ file format Eliminating duplicate vertices XYZ vertex lookup Integer-based vertex lookup Next steps Cloud and Mobile DevBlog Talking about cloud and mobile, we have... Read more →

UIView and Windows Device Coordinates

As I pointed out in the discussion of the new Revit 2013 API features, the add-in integration enhancements include a new View API, and it provides a new UIView class. The UIView class represents a view window, enables you to pan, zoom and determine its size for tiling etc., and may be useful for switchback functionality from other visualization environments, for example. I am very surprised that I have not heard anything more from the developer community about this class... Read more →

Create Section View Parallel to Wall

Here is a nice case that just came up and helped me heal my latent view manipulation phobia. Before getting to that, a short pointer to a non-API issue: The Shanghai Tower is currently being built to become one of the tallest and greenest buildings in the world. Take a look at Shanghai Tower: The Role of BIM in Building the Spirit of the City, a six-minute video explaining the concept and the role of Autodesk BIM solutions in its... Read more →

DocumentChanged versus Dynamic Model Updater

Here is an interesting little overview and comparison of possibilities to react efficiently to the addition of certain elements to the database. Two easy ways to achieve this are by subscribing to the unspecific DocumentChanged event, or by registering a more specific DMU dynamic model updater. If you subscribe to an event or register an updater, it is also important to keep in mind to unsubscribe or unregister when you are done with it. We discussed both of these repeatedly... 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 →

Create Structural Plan View

Today is the last day of the last week before the AEC DevCamp in Waltham. Here are the complete session list and descriptions. I have to submit my material today. Before doing so, one last post on a pure API topic: I mentioned that Revit 2013 introduced a new view API and now includes the possibility to create schedules and section views. Here is a question that came up regarding the new view creation and Onebox and leads to a... Read more →

Change Section View Type and Hide Cut Line

Leo raised a couple of questions on section view creation in his comment which Rudolf Honke very kindly answers thus: 1. Hide view: To hide the cutting line in a plan view, you can use this parameter: viewSection.get_Parameter( BuiltInParameter .SECTION_COARSER_SCALE_PULLDOWN_METRIC ) .Set( 1 ); 2. Generate section view: In Revit 2013, you can use the static method public static ViewSection CreateSection( Document document, ElementId viewFamilyTypeId, BoundingBoxXYZ sectionBox ) In Revit 2012, you can use document.Create.NewViewSection( BoundingBoxXYZ ); 3. Change the... Read more →