AEC DevBlog

Setting Up for A360 Collaboration for Revit

I recently went through the process of setting up the A360 Collaboration for Revit environment for our DevTech AEC team. I just made one blog post on The 360 view based on my experience about it. I thought some of the audience here might find it interesting, too. (Also serves as a note to myself. I probably don't need to do this often, so I'm sure I will forget ;-)  

Please visit the link below for further reading if you are interested in: 

Setting Up for A360 Collaboration for Revit  on The 360 View 

Mikako 

RevitAPI: How to get the available parameters used in ScheduleFilter for a specific category?

中文链接

By Aaron Lu

In Revit we can create schedule with schedule filter so that only the elements passed the filter will be shown in the schedule. e.g. I can let the schedule only show the elements on "level 1".

From the above screenshots, we can see that the parameters available for filtering varies with the category we choose, so is there any way to get all the parameters that can be filterable for a specific category?

The answer is Yes, we can make use of TableView.GetAvailableParameters method, which is mainly used to get the parameters can be schedulable for specific category, as long as the parameter (built-in parameter) is schedulable, it can be filtered. So the example can be:

var availableParameterIds = TableView.GetAvailableParameters
    (RevitDoc, new ElementId(BuiltInCategory.OST_DuctTerminal));
foreach (var pid in availableParameterIds)
{
    var builtinParameter = (BuiltInParameter)pid.IntegerValue;
    //work with the BuiltInParameter
}

 

Create New Saved Viewpoint in Javascript

By Xiaodong Liang

The process to create a saved viewpoint in COM API is:

1. make a copy of the current view. It is the anonymous viewpoint.
2. create a new object with the type InwOpView
3. attach the anonymous viewpoint to the new view.
4. add the new view to the saved viewpoints collection

The codes below demonstrates the process. it also shows how to switch to the new view.

function createView1()

{

    //assume nwviewer is the object of ActiveX control.

    var state = nwviewer.state;

    var savedviewscount =

        state.SavedViews().count;

   

    //check if "MyView1" exists

    var hasView1 = false;

    for(var i=1; i <= savedviewscount;i++ ){

        var eachView =  state.SavedViews().Item(i);

        {

            if(eachView.Name == "MyView1")

            {

                hasView1 = true;

                break;

            }

        }

    }

   

    if(!hasView1)

    {

        //make a copy of the current view. It is the anonymous viewpoint.

        var currentView =

           state.CurrentView.Copy();

        //create a new object with the type:

        var oNewView =

           state.ObjectFactory( state.GetEnum("eObjectType_nwOpView")) ;

        oNewView.Name = "MyView1";

       

        //attach the anonymous viewpoint to the new view.             

        oNewView.anonview = currentView;

        //add the new view to the saved viewpoints collection

        state.SavedViews().Add(oNewView);               

    }

}

 

function applyView1()

{

    //assume nwviewer is the object of ActiveX control.

    var state = nwviewer.state;

    var savedviewscount = state.SavedViews().count;

 

    //check if "MyView1" exists

    var hasView1 = false;

    for (var i = 1; i <= savedviewscount; i++) {

        var eachView = state.SavedViews().Item(i);

        {

            if (eachView.Name == "MyView1") {

                hasView1 = true;

                break;

            }

        }

    }

 

    if (hasView1) {

        //if "MyView1" exists, switch the view to "MyView1"

        state.ApplyView(eachView);

    }

}

 

Re-announcing "The 360 View"

A little announce to make. I have been occasionally writing to Manu's "The 360 View" blog. Over the weekend, Manu kindly put my photo to his blog <blush>, making me as an official co-author. I will be posting about BIM related topics from my point of view. So far, I have posted the materials for BIM 360 Glue API based on our AU presentation. Please visit there occasionally and find out what we are up to.

Mikako 

 

Introducing BIM 360 API Forum

A little anouncement. We have created a new forum called "BIM 360 API" under BIM 360 family community.

This is for customization and API (Application Programming Interface) related topics using BIM 360 family products. If you have any questions about BIM 360 API, feel free to use BIM 360 API forum.

Hope to meet you there! 

Mikako   

RevitAPI: How to get mirrored result after calling ElementTransformUtils.MirrorElement

By Aaron Lu

中文链接

In current Revit (2015 and before), there are 2 methods to mirror elements, they are:

ElementTransformUtils.MirrorElement and

ElementTransformUtils.MirrorElements

But the problem is they don't have return value, meaning we can get the mirrored element(s) directly.

However, there is a workaround to accomplish that using Application.DocumentChanged event.

Workflow:

1. Subscribe Application.DocumentChanged event
2. Mirror element(s)
3. event raises, in the event handler, get the added new element(s)

Example Code, please note the DocumentChanged event can only be raised after the transaction is committed.

public static ICollection<ElementId> MirrorElement(
    Document doc, ElementId elementId, Plane plane)
{
    if (doc == null || plane == null ||
        elementId == ElementId.InvalidElementId ||
        !ElementTransformUtils.CanMirrorElement(doc, elementId))
        throw new ArgumentException("Argument invalid");

    ICollection<ElementId> result = new List<ElementId>();
    // create DocumentChanged event handler
    var documentChangedHandler =
        new EventHandler<DocumentChangedEventArgs>(
            (sender, args) => result = args.GetAddedElementIds());

    // subscribe the event
    doc.Application.DocumentChanged += documentChangedHandler;
    using (Transaction transaction = new Transaction(doc))
    {
        try
        {
            transaction.Start("Mirror");
            ElementTransformUtils.MirrorElement(
            doc, elementId, plane);
            transaction.Commit();
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            TaskDialog.Show("ERROR", ex.ToString());
            transaction.RollBack();
        }

        finally
        {
            // unsubscribe the event
            doc.Application.DocumentChanged -= documentChangedHandler;
        }
    }
    return result;
}

How to use this function

(Following code is to mirror a FamilyInstance near itself, and then display the id(s) of the mirrored elements)

var instance = RevitDoc.GetElement(elementId) as FamilyInstance;
if (instance != null)
{
    var transform = instance.GetTransform();
    var mirrored = MirrorElement(RevitDoc, instance.Id, 
        new Plane(transform.BasisX, transform.Origin));
    TaskDialog.Show("Info", "Mirror succeeded! New mirrored ids: " 
        + mirrored.Aggregate("", (ss, id) => ss + id + " "));
}

Technical Evangelist Intern WANTED.

By Jaime Rosales

Are you currently pursuing a bachelor’s or master’s in Computer science or a discipline with a strong computing component? Are you looking for a life changing Internship experience during your summer? Look no more, Autodesk Developer Network is looking for an enthusiastic intern evangelist for this summer in the Bay Area. If you’re excited by design, and by working with 3D on the web then keep reading.

You  will start by learning the API and developing a plan for writing your sample application(s), which you will then implement. As you progress you will be blogging about your experiences using the API so others can follow in your steps. The finished samples will be posted to our public GitHub account and used by our Developer Evangelists around the world to showcase the API capabilities. There may be opportunities to attend hackathons, meetups and conferences as a sponsor to help spread the word about these amazing APIs.

In short, your task will be to have as much fun as possible doing cool things with our APIs – and then telling other people about the cool stuff you’ve done.

If you are up for the challenge and this sounds like you, APPLY TODAY.

There's still time ...

Happy New Year!

There's still time to make one more New Year's Resolution - to submit a proposal for the inaugural Autodesk Cloud Accelerator program.

Don't miss this opportunity to spend two weeks in sunny San Francisco integrating Autodesk cloud services with your application with the help of Autodesk experts.

Visit the program website to find out more - autodeskcloudaccelerator.com.