AEC DevBlog

#ForgeDevCon and Forge Accelerator

By Jaime Rosales (@afrojme)

We are only a month and a half away from the first Forge Developer Conference, and things are starting to wrap up nicely with the various tracks, which will target a wide variety of industries for the Future of Making Things enthusiasts. Forge DevCon covers a wide range of class themes for application development in product design and manufacturing. Our team of experts are curating more than 50 classes to help you influence the FOMT, including how to apply disruptive technologies to every part of the design, make, use, and manage lifecycle phases in the manufacturing, engineering, and building industries. This is a great opportunity if you follow in the category of a true Maker.

Here is a list of the tracks and sessions that will make Forge DevCon a memorable experience.

1. Virtual and Augmented Reality

    - Tony Parisi (@auradeluxe), one of the early pioneers of VR will be speaking about an Intro to WebVR.

    - Autodesk Researcher and Evangelist, Kean Walmsley (@Keanw) showing us his latest proyects with Collaborative VR using the cheapest of the VR devices on the market, Google Cardboard.

2. Forge Basic 

    -  A dedicated track to the use of Forge API’s and its various applications to create game changing business for you to explore. Drones, Photogrammetry,        Design Data and Visual Reporting are some of the topics to discuss.

3. AEC

   - A meeting point for people who are concerned with our built environment. Topics in this track include cloud-based collaboration for construction and building management; workflows connecting Building Information Modeling (BIM) with fabrication; and Generative Design, and if you have been working with any of these API’s you probably already know Mikako Harada or Jeremy Tammik (@jeremytammik)

Continue…

I could continue talking more in detail about the rest of the tracks, but my post is intended to talk and announce the open call for proposals of the event that will follow DevCon.

As part of our Forge DevCon week, we've scheduled our next Autodesk Forge Accelerator (formerly known as the Autodesk Cloud Accelerator) for June 19-24 inclusive in our San Francisco office . If your application is accepted, you will spend the week in our office working on your projects that make use of Autodesk Forge APIs - with the help of the ADN DevTech team and members of the Autodesk engineering teams. The Autodesk Forge APIs include the View & Data, AutoCAD I/O, BIM 360, RecCap Photo and Fusion 360 APIs - as well as a number of new APIs that will be launched at the conference. You can find a full list of APIs at forge.autodesk.com.

To apply for this program, you will need to submit a proposal of not more than 2000 words describing the project you'd like to work on and how it will make use of the Autodesk Forge APIs. More information on how to apply is available here.

Instead of setting a deadline for proposals, we'll be accepting suitable projects as they come in, so don't wait too long!

This will be the 4th Cloud Accelerator in San Francisco and let me tell you, every single one has been an amazing experience, not only for the attendees to get to work shoulder to shoulder with Autodesk experts, but for us also has been a great experience to create new partners and definitely friends for life.

I'm looking forward to receiving your application.

We're deliberately holding this Accelerator the week after Forge DevCon, so you can come for the conference, spend the weekend at the hackathon (details to be announced soon), and then attend the Accelerator - all in one trip. Why not register for the Forge DevCon today and enjoy the rainiest and foggiest Summer of your life .

Using LISP with AutoCAD Architecture and MEP

Occasionally, we still seem to get questions about using LISP with AutoCAD Architecture (ACA) and MEP (AME). ACA and AME dropped DXF/LISP support since ADT 2004. This blog post gives you a little bit of history and reasoning behind the decision. 

As new people joins, they sometimes assume whatever AutoCAD supports will be automatically extended to verticals. As it's been a while since we had this discussion, I'm bringing up this topic for the sake of people who are new to AutoCAD community.   

The hard fact is that LISP uses DXF code to function, and ACA/MEP do not implement DXF. If you try to use LISP to access AEC objects, it simply does not return values. (Please see the earlier post for details.) 

You can still use LISP as a vanilla AutoCAD. While AutoCAD is not adding any enhancement to LISP, the functionality it has already should remain. Same for VBA; ACA and AME do not support VBA/ActiveX. You can use it only to the level that access non-AEC objects.  

If you are trying to customize ACA and AME, we recomend .NET API.

Mikako

 

It’s alive!! Navisworks 2017 API

by Jaime Rosales (@afrojme)

We know that April is a month for your beloved Autodesk tools to be updated to a new year. Since Navisworks 2017 was released not too long ago, it was not going to take long until we welcome Navisworks SDK 2017 to join the list of releases.

In case you missed What’s new in Navisworks 2017, you can check it out here - http://help.autodesk.com/view/NAV/2017/ENU/?guid=GUID-93E5BAF0-72B8-41EC-8C3A-C7EF5E6AAB5D

If you are a Navisworks API Enthusiast go and grab your kit now. Here is the link for the direct download or head over to the Developer Network site to grab it here.

 

 

Cheers,

About IPointCloudAccess.ReadPoints method

By Augusto Goncalves (@augustomaia)

Forge DevCon

First of all, early bird registration is due to end on April 15th, so you don't have much time to buy your ticket at the low cost of $499. If you're a student, you can come for FREE- just sign up for a student ticket using a .edu email address.We're still working on the agenda. Visit this link for a list of the classes we currently have planned.

IPointCloudAccess.ReadPoints method

After some discussions for specific questions asked by some developers, this blog post summarizes what have being discussed.

When drawing point cloud, Revit calculates the total number of points that can read in the current view and camera, divide the number into several blocks and ask the IPointSetIterator to fill the block by calling ReadPoints(). Revit keep asking for the points until all the blocks as filed or there no points returned. This happens for every view change or camera change. The ReadPoints() method implementation needs to case about the points returned to each call with consideration of LOD.

Most engines implemented the LOD. The figure below shows the context of calling readPoints, and a typical implementation of this interface. The rule is simple:

1. The filter can be used to identify the volume of point cloud to be read.
2. For each call of readPoints, it returns the denser points compared to last call.

This pseudo code is the abstraction from a REAL engine and it works well in Revit.

RevitAPI: How to create wall sweep?

中文链接

By Aaron Lu

Wall Sweep's API class is WallSweep, but there is no method like NewWallSweep under Document.Create object, so how to create it via API?

The answer is using static method Create of WallSweep:

public static WallSweep Create(Wall wall, ElementId wallSweepType, WallSweepInfo wallSweepInfo);

Code example:

var doc = commandData.Application.ActiveUIDocument.Document;
var uiSel = commandData.Application.ActiveUIDocument.Selection;

try
{
    var reference = uiSel.PickObject(Autodesk.Revit.UI.Selection.ObjectType.Element, "Pick wall");
    var wall = doc.GetElement(reference) as Wall;
    ElementType wallSweepType = new FilteredElementCollector(doc)
        .OfCategory(BuiltInCategory.OST_Cornices)
        .WhereElementIsElementType()
        .Cast().FirstOrDefault();
    if (wallSweepType != null)
    {
        var wallSweepInfo = new WallSweepInfo(WallSweepType.Sweep, false);
        wallSweepInfo.Distance = 2;
        using (Transaction transaction = new Transaction(doc))
        {
            transaction.Start("create wall sweep");
            WallSweep.Create(wall, wallSweepType.Id, wallSweepInfo);
            transaction.Commit();
        }
    }
    else
    {
        TaskDialog.Show("ERROR", "no wall sweep type is found");
    }
}
catch (Autodesk.Revit.Exceptions.OperationCanceledException)
{
}

1. First, pick a wall as the host
2. then filter out all the wallsweep type and choose the first one
3. create the argument object WallSweepInfo by calling the constructor of WallSweepInfo, note that we can continue to customize it by setting its properties, e.g. in this example, by calling 'wallSweepInfo.Distance = 2' to set the distance of the wall sweep to the bottom of the hosted wall
4. Finally, call WallSweep.Create function to create the wall sweep

 

Forge DevCon Early Bird, Revit API Moving a Grid

by Jaime Rosales (@afrojme)

 I think it has been quite some time since my last post, but definitely it will be something that would not happen again. I’ve been all over the place presenting and evangelizing about Forge, View and Data API and our upcoming DevCon in San Francisco in the month of the Rainy Summer of June.

The conference is intended for developers, entrepreneurs or technology enthusiasts, who are interested in using Autodesk 'cloud' technologies to disrupt the AEC and Manufacturing industries. Interested? Wait no more click the image below.

Early bird registration is due to end on April 15th, so you don't have much time to buy your ticket at the low cost of $499. If you're a student, you can come for FREE- just sign up for a student ticket using a .edu email address.We're still working on the agenda. Visit this link for a list of the classes we currently have planned.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back to Revit, This week I had the chance to work in a Revit API forum question by community contributor erikeriksson5686 about how to Move the Gridlines using DatumPlane API Method. Forum question here.

Question:So I've been asked to synchronize grid leader locations (along the grid line) between files.I thought that this would be easy using the new API for DatumPlane, BUT i was wrong. The property I want to change in the Leader is the Anchor, but that property is readonly and the documentation says: " This is a read-only property, for the this point gets always computed based on various properties of the annotation element. "

Well for the grid element there are no annotation elements attached to the Leader, right?
Am i missing something? Thanks!

After some back and fort with Revit Engineering one of their own, Lily Li, got back to me with a macro sample on how to achieve the desired workflow. It was so nice of her.

Answer:Hi Erik, Revit Engineering got back to me with a solution for moving the grid. Here is what they wrote:

"The new API for DatumPlane works and the data should be computed by users according to their requirements. Here is a Macro as a sample showing how to get from A to B. Please open the file and run the ‘SynGridLeaders’, it will get the following result.

     After running the Macro, here is the result --------->       

The Anchor property of the leader is read-only as it is computed by the Elbow and End properties set by the users. The new leader should also be set via SetLeader() method to get it work."

You can find the Revit File here

And the code for the Macro is the following:

public void SynGridLeaders()
{
    FilteredElementCollector collector = new FilteredElementCollector(Document);
    collector.OfClass(typeof(Grid));
    IEnumerable<Grid> grids = collector.Cast<Grid>().OrderBy<Grid, int>(vp => vp.Id.IntegerValue);
            
    View view = Document.ActiveView;
    if(!(view is ViewPlan))
    {
        return;
    }
            
    using (Transaction trans = new Transaction(Document, "Set leader"))
    {
        Leader leaderBase = null;
        trans.Start();
                
        try
        {
            foreach(Grid grid in grids)
            {
                // The Grid 1 is the baseline
                if(grid.Name == "1")
                {
                    leaderBase = grid.GetLeader(DatumEnds.End1, view);
                    continue;
                }
                else
                {
                    Leader leader = grid.GetLeader(DatumEnds.End1, view);
                    if(leader != null)
                    {
                        XYZ anchor = leader.Anchor;
                        XYZ end = leader.End;
                        XYZ elbow = leader.Elbow;
                        XYZ newEnd;
                        XYZ newElbow;
                                
                        double distY = leaderBase.Elbow.Y - leaderBase.End.Y;
                        double distElbowX = leaderBase.Elbow.X - leaderBase.End.X;
                        double distEndX = leaderBase.End.X - leader.End.X;
                                
                        newEnd = new XYZ(leader.End.X + distEndX, leader.End.Y, leader.End.Z);
                        newElbow = new XYZ(leader.End.X + distEndX + distElbowX, leader.End.Y +distY, leader.Elbow.Z);

                        leader.Elbow = newElbow;
                        leader.End = newEnd;
                                
                        grid.SetLeader(DatumEnds.End1, view, leader);
                    }
                }
                        
            }
            if(Document.IsModified)
                trans.Commit();
        }
        catch(Exception ex)
        {
            trans.RollBack();
        }
    }
}

 

The file attached is saved by R2016R2 version. If running the macro the grid leaders don’t change, please click ‘edit’ button of the macro, compile it then run it again. ( Remember to enable the macro when opening the file.)

Check it out and let me know, hope this solves your question

Thank you again for your patience and collaboration.

--------------------------------------------------

I’m still waiting for Erik to get back to me, but after testing the macro, I’m sure it will be something that you guys can benefit from. Cheers and until next time.

RevitAPI: how to get point clouds?

中文链接

By Aaron Lu

From Revit > Insert > Point Cloud, we can insert point clouds into Revit, then how to get those points information via API?

Inspect with RevitLookup, we found the inserted point cloud is an object of class PointCloudInstance, and there is a method named GetPoints, which is what we want.

 

GetPoints() has 3 arguments

public PointCollection GetPoints(
PointCloudFilter filter, double averageDistance, int numPoints);

filter specifies the conditions for filtering points.

averageDistance stands for minimal distance between points, the smaller, the more points we will get.

numPoints stands for the maximum number of points to be returned.

The key is how to create the filter, there is no constructor of class PointCloudFilter, no static Create function, and no relative creation functions under Document.Create nor Application.Create, fortunately, we found method CreateMultiPlaneFilter in class PointCloudFilterFactory.

public static PointCloudFilter CreateMultiPlaneFilter(IList<Autodesk.Revit.DB.Plane> planes);
public static PointCloudFilter CreateMultiPlaneFilter(IList<Autodesk.Revit.DB.Plane> planes, int exactPlaneCount);

planes: defines a set of planes, all points returned should be in the positive direction of those planes, so we can use those planes to define a range to include all the points, and the range can be non-closure.

exactPlaneCount: Exact number of planes to match. The greater, the more accurate (meaning less points are outside of the range defined by planes), the slower of the searching speed. If not specified, it is default to the number of first argument: planes.

Below example shows how to filter out points inside a box:

if (pointCloudInstance != null)
{
    int SIZE = 100;
    List<Plane> planes = new List<Plane>();
    var min = new XYZ(-SIZE,-SIZE, -SIZE);
    var max = new XYZ(SIZE, SIZE, SIZE);

    //x planes
    planes.Add(new Plane(XYZ.BasisX, min));
    planes.Add(new Plane(-XYZ.BasisX, max));

    //y planes
    planes.Add(new Plane(XYZ.BasisY, min));
    planes.Add(new Plane(-XYZ.BasisY, max));

    //z planes
    planes.Add(new Plane(XYZ.BasisZ, min));
    planes.Add(new Plane(-XYZ.BasisZ, max));

    PointCloudFilter pcf = PointCloudFilterFactory.CreateMultiPlaneFilter(planes);
    var points = pointCloudInstance.GetPoints(pcf, 1, 100000);
}