The Building Coder

OptionsBar and Bye Bye to DA4R 2018

A great new open-source productivity enhancement tool making use of the built-in OptionsBar provides handy access to frequently used information, utilities, element selection options and more, and a reminder of the deprecated DA4R Revit 2018 engine... Read more →

Extensible Storage Schema Deletion

A new team member, new Revit API and WPF tutorials, and new insights on handling extensible storage – Welcome, George! – WPF form UIApplication access – Mazri's Revit, Dynamo, web and WPF playlists – Extensible storage schema deletion – Extensible storage schema conflict... Read more →

Immutable UniqueId and Revit Database Explorer

A new initiative to improve RevitLookup, and take care handling and trying to convert between an element id and its unique id – Immutable UniqueId, mutable element id – Revit database explorer... Read more →

Analysis of Macros, Journals and Add-In Manager

Looking at Revit macro usage, add-in manager debug/trace functionality and journal analysis in Python and Dynamo – Revit macro study shareback – Add-in manager with debug trace – Journal file analysis – Plugging the HSL colour format... Read more →

RevitLookup, WPF, Preventing Modification

Different approaches to prevent modification of certain elements and the latest news on RevitLookup – Prevent modification – RevitLookup updates – RevitLookupWpf – Pilcrow... Read more →

Add-In Manager, FormulaManager and Tiger Year

Exciting news around debugging and loading add-ins and adding formulas and scripting support to your own apps – Open source Add-In Manager – FormulaManager and scripting support – Happy New Year of the Tiger 虎... Read more →

BIM360 Scripts, Dotnet Template and Prism Goodies

Philipp Mueller highlights a set of BIM360 user management scripts and Diego Rossi shares two useful GitHub repositories – BIM360 user management scripts – External application with Prism goodies – Revit add-in dotnet template... Read more →

Duct Shape, BipChecker Facelift and @ Fonts

I begin this week with a rather mixed bag of interesting issues from the last – Get MEP duct shape update – Determining differences between DLL versions – BipChecker facelift – Fonts with '@' prefix... Read more →

Revit WPF Add-Ins and Template

The long-standing topic of WinForms versus WPF for Revit add-in user interface seems to be nearing a conclusion – WinForms or WPF? – Revit WPF template – Readme – Build – Customize – Documentation... Read more →

Integrating the Helix 3D Viewer with a WPF Add-In

This is The Building Coder post number 1800, in its eleventh year of existence. We celebrate by highlighting the integration of a 3D geometry and model viewer in a Revit add-in with a solution making use of several interesting techniques, including the use of IPC for add-in disentanglement from third-party library dependencies and a new custom exporter implementation for OBJ. This issue was raised in two discussions, on a plug-in that displays Revit's 3D window content and using a geometry viewer in a Revit add-in to preview results... Read more →

UI Top Forms, Buttons, Web, etc.

Several user interface related topics are being discussed in the Revit API discussion forum – Keep my form on top of Revit! – Creating buttons and getting started with an add-in UI – Integrating a web-based UI... Read more →

Accelerator, Dash Pattern Fix, Rotation and Phase

I am participating in the Forge Accelerator in Barcelona this week. Let me mention some pending Revit API issues before diving into any accelerator topics – AddMaterials enhancements – Retrieving element rotation – Changing the phase created parameter... Read more →

Room Boundaries to CSV and WPF Template

Happy New Year! I spent some time during the winter break working on CSV export of room boundaries for a Forge BIM surface classification tool. Ali Asad presented a new Visual Studio WPF MVVM Revit add-in template – Export room boundaries to CSV for Forge surface classification – Visual Studio WPF MVVM Revit add-in template... Read more →

Ten Years Anniversary, MVVM, WPF and WinForm

Today is The Building Coder's tenth birthday! The first post was a warm welcome on August 22, 2008. Very many thanks to the entire community for all your support, interest, comments and above all numerous contributions over the years! Today, let's pick up the recurring topic of accessing the Revit API from a modeless context... Read more →

Modeless Form Keep Revit Focus and On Top

I am back from a nice break in Italy. Next, I am attending the European Autodesk University in Darmstadt, Germany. Meanwhile, solutions for two issues on keeping Revit focused and on top when working with a modeless form, and an important heads-up warning from the Revit development team on a future change coming. We here at Ideate Software are seeing what appears to be Revit add-in ownership issues with Revit's main window. The behavior has changed between Revit 2017 and Revit 2018 for modeless add-ins. For Revit 2018, when a modeless add-in is closed, Revit does not retain is focus; it is pushed behind another application... Read more →

WTA Elec, FireP and 3D Aimer Tools

I am traveling to Gothenburg for the Forge accelerator. Meanwhile, Allan Seidel shared his WTA FireP 3D Aimer add-in that creates a custom ribbon tab with discipline related tools for placing specific Revit family types with some families requiring parameter settings made on the fly and the 3D Aimer example that "aims" a special Revit family to a target – WTA FireP 3D Aimer Tools – GitHub Repository and YouTube Video – Source Code Documentation – WTA Elec – Another Family Plunk and Concept Share... Read more →

WPF Revit Family Browser and Vacation

I am away on vacation. In the meantime, Roman Lavrov shared his Revit Family Browser, saying: I am working on family browser for Revit using Revit API and WPF. Your blog helps me a lot, so I decide to share my work with you. I think, some ideas will be useful for other coders. If you have time, please take a look my program on GitHub at github.com/RomanLavrov/RevitFamilyBrowser... Read more →

DevDay Conference in Munich and WPF DoEvents

Let's talk about doing events, from two radically different perspectives, one great big external one and lots of teeny-weeny little internal ones. I'll share some pictures from the European DevDay conference and snow in Munich today, then discuss a WPF issue that came up last week – DevDay conference in Munich – WPF DoEvents... Read more →

PickPoint with WPF and No Threads Attached

Here is another contribution from Saied Zarrinmehr, of the BIM-SIM Research Group at the Texas A&M University, on the thread safety of the Selection.PickPoint method in Revit 2014 and 2015, resulting in a sample testing different methods for hiding and unhiding a WPF window. I trust they are interesting and useful for people working with Revit 2016 as well. Before getting to that, Calvin and Hobbes anniversary... 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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

Handle Your Own Exceptions

I was under the impression that it should be hard for an add-in to crash Revit. Therefore, it was a surprise yesterday to receive an add-in displaying a form and instructions to reliably cause Revit to terminate unexpectedly with just two or three clicks. The reason is simple, however, as we shall see below, and underlines once again how hard it is to properly implement and handle any modeless activity within a Revit add-in. Important aspects were discussed in the... 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 →

Ensure WPF Add-in Remains in Foreground

Autumn arrived and passed in a flash. The woods are beautifully coloured, and, unusually, the first snow is already lying on the surrounding hills. Here are some items of interest from cases we looked at last week: Ensure WPF add-in remains in foreground Retrieve all model lines Set linked file visibility Access linked file elements and data Visual Studio 2012 Model Editor Supports OBJ and FBX Sie Mögen Sich Ensure WPF Add-in Remains in Foreground Here is an issue concerning... Read more →