The Building Coder

What's New in the Revit 2010 API

I am in vacation in Italy, and trying not to work. There is one project that I had in mind for quite a while, though, and will start addressing now anyway during this break: I plan to publish the contents of the Revit API documentation 'What's New' sections from the previous few releases of the Revit API help file RevitAPI.chm here, so that they become included in future Internet searches. The reason for this is that I have found them... Read more →

Access to Shared Family Parameter GUID

Here is a question that came up several times. It also demonstrates a neat (if somewhat time consuming) use of Reflection to access a property that otherwise would be inaccessible. Here is the original question: Question: How can I reliably tell whether a parameter on a family document is a shared parameter, or is actually a family parameter? If it is a shared parameter, how can I retrieve its original GUID as it was when it was originally added to... Read more →

Дополнения для Ревит – Russian Add-ins for Revit

If you can read Russian, you may be interested in Arthur Kurakov's blog. Arthur presents several Revit add-ins useful for the Russian market, and some are certainly useful for other countries as well. Superfilter суперфильтр is better than the basic Revit filter: The standard Revit filter filters by element category, whereas Superfilter filters by family and type instead. It is easier to filter room tags, for instance. One is square and the other is the mark of this room. This... Read more →

Family Problems Missing Components

The title of this question from my colleague Greg Wesner of Autodesk is so nice, I just had to add it to the blog, even though we have actually already provided the explanation a long time ago. Question: Family problems... ... no, not that kind – Revit Family problems :-) This seems so simple, yet I'm way too tired to try to figure this out. I'm porting some code that I didn't write from Revit 2009 to 2010. I'm getting... Read more →

Custom Ribbon Tab Context Switch

Guy Robinson updated his custom ribbon tab solution to correctly handle context switching between standard projects and families. Read more →

Happy New Year 2010

I am back again from the break. I wish all readers a happy and harmonious new year! I completed the ten day Vipassana course organised by www.dhamma.org, an organisation initiated by S. N. Goenka, which I mentioned before Christmas. Here is a good introductory article describing the goals and the technique. I can highly recommend this retreat to anyone interested in meditation and with ten days to spare, the investment in time is well worthwhile. Beside the goals of seeing... Read more →

Create a Real Revit Ribbon Tab

We made it to Paris on Friday after all, arriving a ten in the morning instead of the Thursday evening as planned. Still, we were able to successfully present the DevDays conference, so that was good. That was also the last day of my working year, at least officially. I spent the evening in Paris and had a nice train ride through the snow back to Switzerland on Saturday. I have a number of Christmas presents collecting here in my... Read more →

Custom Ribbon Tab

I am still on tour presenting at the Western European DevDays conferences, and with no time for blogging or responding to comments. In fact, I have almost no time for anything at all except presenting, meeting and discussing with participants during the day, and getting from one city to the next in the evenings. Right now I am sitting in the airport waiting for a plain to Milano. Back to Bella Italia, albeit for less than twenty-four hours. I was... Read more →

Parameter Filter Units

The Western European DevDays conference tour has begun, and I will be presenting and travelling all week, leaving very little time to spend blogging or responding to comments. I visited relatives in London the preceding weekend, and took some time to write and post this before the real crunch began. Several previous posts deal with various aspects of unit handling in the Revit API: Units. Formatting unit strings. Unit types and format options. Unit conversion. Unit Suffix and the ProjectUnit... Read more →

Updated DevTV Introduction to Revit Programming

The Revit Developer Center proudly presents an updated version of the DevTV Introduction to Revit Programming for Revit 2010, which is now available in both English and Portuguese: English: View online | Download. Portuguese: View online | Download. Oh dear, Saikat just pointed out that the online viewing links apparently do not work here, they only work when selected on the Revit Developer Center page. Sorry about that. The original version was created based on Revit 2008, and we reused... Read more →

Extract Part Atoms

Last week, we discussed how to use the Revit API to read the values of family parameters. Another quick way to access all non-empty parameter values in a family file and see some other interesting family data as well is to simply make a call to the Application.ExtractPartAtomFromFamilyFile method. It is mentioned in the What's New section of the Revit 2010 API help file. Its purpose is to export family data to XML for integration with Autodesk Seek. It opens... Read more →

Product Support Subscription Videos

I mentioned the Revit 2010 Subscription Pack last week, and Matt Mason highlighted the model review add-in included with it and its little API, which is just one example of all the good stuff in there. Autodesk Product Support has now published a series of 'deeper dive' subscription pack videos which cover the subscription pack features and functionality and provide you with a deeper understanding of their use as well as anticipating and answering potential questions. Read more →

RvtMgdDbg for Revit 2010

Rod Howarth asked a very pertinent question on RvtMgdDbg: Question: Just wondering, is the 2010 version allowed to be distributed to non ADN members? Is it uploaded anywhere? I would have thought it would be ok given the 2009 version and its source code are publicly available. Just thought I'd check. Answer: Thank you for asking this very pertinent question. As said in the discussion on RvtMgdDbg for Revit 2009, this is an essential tool that we recommend to every... Read more →

Revit Family Creation API Labs

The handouts and presentation for my Autodesk University family API session are finally done, as well they should be, since they are due to be submitted by today. The last part I worked on was to add more documentation on the family API labs to the handout document. I think this overview will be of interest here as well. The family API labs were originally created and documented by Mikako Harada, the ADN AEC workgroup lead, so all of the... Read more →

Revit 2010 Subscription Pack

The Autodesk Subscription Advantage Packs have been released, including ones for Autodesk Revit Architecture, MEP and Structure 2010. English versions are now available for download on Subscription Center. ADN members also have access to the subscription center by going to the ADN home page and selecting Autodesk Subscription Center. The subscription pack is also available directly from the ADN Revit download page. Look there for the Autodesk Revit 2010 September/October update. The Revit 2010 subscription packs provide the same minor... Read more →

Revit 2010 Web Update 2

The first web update of Revit 2010 (build 20090612_2115) was already released earlier this year. Now the web update 2 for Revit 2010 (build 20090914_1845) including new fixes and minor enhancements has been published and can be downloaded from the public Revit product pages: Revit Architecture > Product Download Revit Structure > Product Download Revit MEP > Product Download The update is also available from the ADN Revit download page. Look there for the Autodesk Revit 2010 September/October update. The... Read more →

Getting Started with the Revit 2010 API

I am back again from a great vacation in Italy which I mostly spent outdoors camping, swimming, cooking, and drinking cappuchino. Yesterday was the Jeûne Fédéral holiday (French) in Neuchâtel. I used that to make a first pass through my overfull email inbox. Meanwhile, here is a quick summary and overview of the material we have put together so far for getting started with the Revit 2010 API. Question: Do you have any updated information similar to the getting started... Read more →

MEP Sample Ribbon Panel

I am preparing our upcoming Revit MEP API webcast to be held on Thursday August 27th. To register, you can go to the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) DevTech API training schedule and filter for Revit MEP API. One thing I did today was to update our MEP sample external application from the Revit 2009 menu-based user interface to a 2010-style custom ribbon panel. Here is the code for the AddMenu method that was being used in Revit 2009 to create... Read more →

The Revit Family API

Here is a rather lengthy and rich post to start off the week, describing the new family API introduced in Revit 2010 and including both an overview and in-depth information. These are the main topics covered: Creating a Family through the User Interface. Creating a Family Programmatically. Family API Samples in the Revit SDK. Family API Labs: Creating an Example Family. Family API Webcast and Materials. The text presented here is also a script for the Revit Family API slide... Read more →

Revit Family API Webcast

Here is a last-minute reminder to register for the Revit Family API webcast that we are holding tomorrow, Thursday July 23rd. You have 25 hours time until it begins, starting now. To register, you can visit the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) DevTech API training schedule site, filter for Revit Family API, and click on the register link. This webcast is open to all developers, regardless of ADN membership. Read more →

Revit Form Creation API

Here is an overview of the Revit form creation API written by Saikat Bhattacharaya. The form creation and conceptual design API can be seen as a subset of the new Revit 2010 family API. It includes new point and curve objects, form making tools, and new surfaces that can be divided, patterned and panelised. You can use it to create schematic studies for curtain system designs and structural framing layouts, and even apply real curtain panels to your form with... Read more →

Revit 2010 Web Update 1

The Revit 2010 Web Update 1 is now available from the usual places: Revit Architecture Revit Structure Revit MEP Click on the Product Download link on the left hand side. Here are the detailed Revit API enhancements included in this update, available in all three flavours: Suppressed Revit inaccuracies warnings during transaction when generating geometries using massing API. Associated LinearArray's NumMembers property with Family parameter. Dissociated FamilyParameter from Label property of BaseArray and Dimension. Provided a tool to update reference... Read more →

DWG and DWF Family Creation

Here is another question on family creation, this time not regarding parameters, but the geometrical content and reuse of existing geometry. Revit is a strongly parametric system, and the Revit family management obviously also. However, if one happens to have important predefined static geometry for certain components, that can be reused as well. It is of course a shame to be using static, non-parametric geometry in an environment with such powerful support for parameterisation. In some cases, however, reusing pre-existing... Read more →

Get and Set Family Category and Parameters

I am receiving a lot of questions about parameters in family documents, so I will be posting several solutions in this area in the next few days. The first one is short and simple and suited for a rapid Saturday post. There is so much news coming that I do want to cram it in right away. This is a question from Jose Fandos of Andekan LLC: Question: How can we get and set the family category and the family... Read more →

Volume Computation Enable

We discussed abstract volume computation of a convex hull or cloud of points last week. Revit can also compute certain volumes, of course, for instance the volume of rooms. However, this functionality is not automatically enabled. To switch it on you need to set a certain toggle called VolumeComputationEnable on the document settings volume calculation options. Unfortunately, there is a slight issue with the API documentation on this property ... Question: When I try turn on the value of the... Read more →

The Revit MEP 2010 API

We already presented an analysis of the MEP connectors in Revit 2010, but a general introduction to the MEP-specific API is still missing. Or was, until today. Question: What can I do with the Revit MEP API? What's new in Revit MEP 2010? Are there any additions or enhancements specifically for the MEP flavour? Any new content? Answer: The Revit 2010 API has been strongly enhanced with new MEP-specific features. The main feature of the RME API is to provide... Read more →

Category Comparison and Model Elements Revisited

This is a follow-up to two previous posts, on category comparison and the selection of model elements. Regarding the category comparison, we discussed the fact that categories cannot be compared directly, and one should use their element id instead. We also underlined that every category comparison should be made language independent by using the built-in category enumeration and not comparing the localised category names. The analysis of the model element selection examined how to eliminate the preview legend components from... Read more →

Creating a Curved Beam

Here is a solution from my colleague Joe Ye on how to create a curved beam. This is also the first and so far only Building Coder sample that demonstrates the use of the Revit API DoubleArray and NurbSpline classes. Question: I am creating curved beams using NURBS. When the spline in parallel to the XY plane, all works well: When the curve is lying in the YZ or XZ plane, however, the resulting beam is straight: How can I... Read more →

Auto-Confirm Save Using DialogBoxShowing Event

Simon Del Faveo of RevitTV Limited asked an interesting question which I decided to implement a sample application for, since it may be of general interest and even general use. It demonstrates a specific use of the new events provided by the Revit 2010 API. Question: We are trying to save loaded family files after some parameters have been added. When using the Save or Close functions, Revit always prompts you with the confirm message box asking 'Do you want... Read more →

Adding a Shared Parameter to an RFA File

Back again from my vacation in Avignon. We had a wonderful drive back up again through the gorges of the Buëch river with a beautiful camp near Rosans. I knew the place from last year, and here are two photos from that visit. Here is Cornelius at the camp fire in the evening: Here is our camp site in the early morning dew: We were lucky with the weather, sleeping outside with no roof, preferring the open sky to a... Read more →

Host Reference

Still enjoying my climbing and sunshine holiday with my sons in Avignon. Yesterday we went climbing and exploring the cliffs or 'calanque' of Cassis, east of Marseille (more images): Besides climbing, swimming in the Gard river and Mediterranean Sea, and blogging now and then, my sons are also artistically active: Returning to the Revit API, however: We already touched on the relationship between a host and its hosted elements in some previous posts. The first such topic was the relationship... Read more →

Imports in Families

I will have left on vacation once again by the time this is posted. In case you wonder why I am on vacation so much, the trip to Italy in March and the wonderful experiences I had there were actually to use up last year's contingent. Now I am getting started on this years', going off on a climbing and driving trip to southern France with my two sons Christopher and Cornelius, especially to the Provence and Avignon to visit... Read more →

Porting the Building Coder Samples

Today is actually a bridging day here in Neuchâtel, following the Ascension Day holiday yesterday. I want to finish off a few urgent things before going on vacation for the next two weeks with my kids, so I am taking the opportunity to post this anyway. I finally got around to porting the Building Coder sample code to the Revit 2010 API. I was leaving it in 2009 for as long as possible so as not to force anybody to... Read more →

Selecting Model Elements

This morning I woke up really early. The hotel clock was set incorrectly, so when I woke up and looked at it, I thought I was much too late for my meeting. I jumped out of bed, grabbed and packed all my things and ran out of the room to the lobby, where I noticed that it seemed rather quiet outside and the light was very soft and special in the early morning. Up here in the north it does... Read more →

Revit 2010 Ribbon API

I am currently sitting in Stockholm, preparing a visit to a Revit developer here and enjoying the wonderful Swedish nature in May. On Saturday I cut a couple of cubic meters of beautiful birch wood for heating with my friend Alexander in Huddinge, and on Sunday we went together with another class mate Lasse for a walk in the woods and around the lakes and marshes in Roslagen north of Stockholm, specifically to the three lakes Stora Harsjön, Lilla Harsjön... Read more →

Document Modification in an Event

Here is a question raised by Phillip Miller on the topic of the new 2010 events: Question: I'm having trouble with the DocumentClosing event. I want to set parameters of objects as Revit closes down the document. I'm using element.Parameter("Schedule").Set(nul), but the error says that Revit can't do it outside of the transaction. I tried wrapping the command in a Transaction but that fails as well. I am however using the same code to set parameters on objects during the... Read more →

VB Samples and Other Questions

I have been very quiet now for a few days. The reason is that I went on a climbing weekend to Mallorca with my brother and left my laptop in the car while we went for a climb. The car was broken into, and the laptop and all my valuables were stolen, right down to the bicycle keys. Since I had actually used the bicycle to get to the airport, the first thing I had to do on arriving back... Read more →

Revit API Introduction Webcast

I mentioned yesterday that the recording and materials of the Revit API Introduction webcast held last week on Wednesday April 29th is now available from the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) DevTech API training schedule site. Filter for Revit API, English, Webcast and click on the download link to obtain the 45 MB zip file RevitAPI_2010_Webcast.zip. Besides the recording, it also includes the Powerpoint presentation, online questions and answers, the Revit API Introduction labs for both Visual Studio 2005 and 2008,... Read more →

Transform an Element

Question: How can I apply a transformation to a Revit element or family instance? I used to work in the AutoCAD API, where I could apply a transformation using the transformBy() method. It takes an AcGeMatrix3d parameter, which can represent a composed transformation including rotation, scaling, translation and mirroring. In the Revit API, I see the use of the 4x3 matrix represented by the Transform class, which I suppose serves the same purpose. However, I am unable to find a... Read more →

MEP Connectors

We had an internal discussion on the relationship between the different API classes involved in defining connectors in Revit MEP which I thought might be of general interest as well. Question: What is the difference between the Connector class versus the DuctConnector, PipeConnector and ElectricalConnector ones? I know one of them is used in the context of family documents only, and the other one is in project context. But what is the main difference between them? Answer: In Revit MEP,... Read more →

New 2010 Events

The Event API in Revit has been completely rewritten in 2010 to be compliant to the .NET event standard. The old events are still available but have been deprecated. Matt Mason already posted an overview of some of the new event handling features. Transitioning from the old events to the new ones can include some pitfalls, and one has now been uncovered. Question: My application connects to a database when a project is opened. It uses the following code which... Read more →

Omni Class Numbers

Revit 2010 supports OmniClass codes. The Revit Architecture help provides the following background information on these codes in the section on Preparing Content for Sharing with Autodesk Seek, which is currently only available in the English edition: OmniClass is a new classification system for the construction industry. The Autodesk Seek website uses codes from OmniClass Table 23 to filter and identify shared content. A code consists of an OmniClass number and title. If an OmniClass code is not already assigned... Read more →

Cylindrical Column

Question: How can I detect whether a column is round in Revit Structure 2010? I implemented a solution that worked in Revit Structure 2009, but it cannot be used in the 2010 SDK, because the SolidForms and CurveLoop methods no longer exist: bool IsColumnRound( FamilySymbol symbol ) { GenericFormSet solid = symbol.Family.SolidForms; GenericFormSetIterator i = solid.ForwardIterator(); i.MoveNext(); Extrusion extr = i.Current as Extrusion; CurveArray cr = extr.Sketch.CurveLoop; CurveArrayIterator i2 = cr.ForwardIterator(); i2.MoveNext(); String s = i2.Current.GetType().ToString(); return s.Contains( "Arc" );... Read more →

Add-In Keyboard Shortcut

Here is a short item from a case handled by Saikat Bhattacharya: Question: How can I define keyboard shortcuts for external commands in the Revit 2010 add-ins tab? Answer: Shortcut keys for Revit are defined by adding entries to the file KeyboardShortcuts.txt. This file is located in the Revit Program folder, together with Revit.exe and Revit.ini. It contains a commented header section describing how to construct a new shortcut key entry. A shortcut definition consists of a line specifying the... Read more →

Installing the Revit 2010 SDK

Compiling the SDK samples As discussed previously, you can use SDKSamples2010.sln to compile all the samples in one fell swoop. The various sample projects in this solution expect you to have all three flavours of Revit installed in the default locations, otherwise compilation will fail for some of the samples. So far, I installed only Revit Architecture 2010, not MEP or Structure. In order to easily compile all the samples anyway, I simply copied the same RevitAPI.dll to the other... Read more →

Getting Started with the Revit 2009 API

Here is a succinct overview of some resources available for getting started using the Revit API, compiled by Mikako Harada. The individual items have been mentioned in previous posts, and links to those are included. This document provides a useful and up-to-date overview for the current state, still focused on Revit 2009. You can expect an update of this material later in a couple of month's time, when the training material has been enhanced for Revit 2010. Setting up the... Read more →

Revit API Cases 1

Here are the summaries of some of the Revit API ADN cases handled by me and my colleagues Joe Ye and Saikat Bhattacharya in the past few days: Set the display colour of a line. Split walls and lines, or ducts and pipes. Change colour of a family instance. Export family symbols from a project and save in an external RFA file. 1. Set the display colour of a line Question: How can I set the display colour of a... Read more →

DevDays Online Recordings

The recordings from our recent DevDays Online events are now publicly available. They cover API-related information about much of the 2010 family of products. Here is a link to the recording of the AEC session (47.5 MB). The links for the AutoCAD, Geospatial, Manufacturing and Civil 3D domains are available from Kean's blog Through the Interface. Read more →

Back Again

I'm back from a wonderful vacation in southern Italy. I tried to plan something beforehand and inform myself, but found no time to do so. I ended up just booking the flights to and from Napoli, with no idea what would happen in between. My main goal was to practice Italian. And the result was great! The main components were: I spoke to lots and lots of people, it was really wonderful, they are so nice. I saw wonderful places,... Read more →

Revit Install Path and Product GUIDs

Things were a bit hectic with many cases toward the end of last week, so less posts. By chance and luck, I was able to spontaneously join a ski tour on Sunday. The danger of avalanches is currently pretty high in most of Switzerland, and the weather was bad with lots of snow as well, so we evaded those problems by going way down south into Ticino and climbing Motto Crostel, 2302 m, from Faido and Tengia at 1099 m.... Read more →