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 .

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,

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.

Halloween weekend and Select Sheets to Print Revit API

By Jaime Rosales (@afrojme)

This past Saturday the last day of October could only mean one thing, trick or treaters around the street and crazy Halloween parades overcrowding 6th Avenue in NYC. Unfortunately, this year I was not able to join and get dressed up as previous years since I moved to a new place, so we can say my Halloween costume for this year was an Apartment Mover. I still got the chance to see some of this years customs on the Streets of NYC and thankfully I ran into my favorite movie characters of all time, yes you guessed it right, Star Wars costumes. Check out this nice picture of a family of three where the youngest Storm Tropper took his duty very seriously and gave me a violation ticket because I was not wearing any custom that day.

 

Back to Revit API. This past week I had the chance to work on a case, where a developer was trying to find a way to create a custom ViewSet in order to print the Sheets he selected from the Project Browser tab.

Question: I’m working on one addin that will allow me to select the sheets I want to include in my custom Viewset in order to print them. I have attached all files for reference. Looking for solutions from Revit API experts.

 

Answer: I see that your question was posted in the Revit API forum as well (See link here). Where other API developers have done very good suggestions. Even creating your own Windows Form to add the selected sheets so you can create the ViewSet you desire to Print.

Response Developer:The suggestions we received in the forum are correct, but we are trying to do in other manner as mentioned in the attachment. One more clarification to you we are not trying to do this in a Windows form. I want add the ones I select to the printing set.

Final Answer: Thank you for your explanation. So if this does not give you Joy, I don't know what it will :). Here I'm providing you a function that creates your own custom ViewSet to be ready to Print, which will include the Sheets you select from the Sheets tree in the Project Browser.

How to use it: Select one or more Sheets using CTRL key to add more and then run your plugin. After the ViewSet gets created you can open the Print Dialog in order to check that what you selected has been included in the View/Sheet Set.

I will suggest to add some tweaks to the code in order to make it more personalized for your use. But for right now. I hope you are happy with what I'm providing you.

 

public void SelectedSheetsToPrint
            (UIDocument uidoc, Document doc)
        {
            // Let's get the Sheets you Selected
            Selection sel = uidoc.Selection;
            ICollection ids = sel.GetElementIds();
            FilteredElementCollector SSTP = 
                new FilteredElementCollector(doc, ids);
            ElementClassFilter WantedElements = 
                new ElementClassFilter(typeof(ViewSheet));
            SSTP.WherePasses(WantedElements);
            List PrintElem = 
                SSTP.ToElements() as List;
            ViewSet myViewSet = new ViewSet();

            foreach (Element elements in PrintElem)
             {
                 ViewSheet viewSheet = elements as ViewSheet;
                 myViewSet.Insert(viewSheet);
             }
             // get the PrintManger from the current document
             PrintManager printManager = doc.PrintManager;

             // set this PrintManager to use the 
             // "Selected Views/Sheets" option
             printManager.PrintRange = PrintRange.Select;

             // get the ViewSheetSetting which manages the 
             // view/sheet set information of current document
             ViewSheetSetting viewSheetSetting = 
                 printManager.ViewSheetSetting;

             // set the views in this ViewSheetSetting 
             // to the newly created ViewSet
             viewSheetSetting.CurrentViewSheetSet.Views = 
                 myViewSet;

             if (myViewSet.Size == 0)
             {
                 TaskDialog.Show("Error", "No sheets selected");
                 return;
             }

             using (Transaction trans = 
                 new Transaction(doc, "Create ViewSet"))
             {
                 trans.Start();
                 // You can prompt the user to set their ViewSet name
                 string setName = "Jaime Test";
                 try
                 {
                     // Save the current view sheet 
                     // set to another view/sheet 
                     // set with the specified name.
                     viewSheetSetting.SaveAs(setName);
                 }
                 // handle the exception that will 
                 // occur if there is already a 
                 // view/sheet set with this name
                 catch (Autodesk.Revit.Exceptions.
                            InvalidOperationException)
                 {
                     TaskDialog.Show("Error", 
                         setName + " is already in use");
                     trans.RollBack();
                     return;
                 }
                 trans.Commit();
             }
             TaskDialog.Show("View Set", myViewSet.Size + 
                 " sheets added to the Set and are ready to Print");
    }

 

Please let me know how it goes, and once again thank you for your patience and collaboration.

By the way, the code could have been created by you, by checking some of the suggestions our forum contributors gave you and also checking RevitLookup tool.

Happy coding and enjoy :).

Response Developer: Dear Jaime Thanks a lot on this for your ton of support you provided, The solution works as we wanted.

Another happy customer and It was fun small project to work on.

Thank you for reading until next time.

Autodesk DevDays 2015 and Accelerator week for the 1st Time!!

 

Spend quality time in the cloud and learn where Autodesk is taking the desktop platforms in the coming year. 

The annual, global — and free Autodesk DevDays events will take place around the globe from November 2015 through to January 2016. In order to give developers more opportunity and to provide one-on-one help building apps using Autodesk web services, Autodesk is changing the format this year.  DevDays will be weeklong events including the traditional DevDay event on the first day and then an optional — but highly recommended — 3-4 day (depending on location) abbreviated form of our extremely popular Autodesk Cloud Accelerator program.

Our annual DevDays events have always been the best way that our Autodesk Developer Network partners keep up to date with new and upcoming technology and features.  This time we’re expanding the opportunity not just to learn, but also to work with us by getting expert help for your projects.

Attend DevDays to discover Autodesk 360ws – the technology and business platform for a new generation of connected Cloud, Web and Mobile apps and services such as View & Data, AutoCAD I/O, Fusion 360, BIM 360, Recap 360, and InfraWorks 360. See and learn about the upcoming enhancements in the capabilities and APIs of the next Desktop platform releases.  Visit www.autodeskdevdays.com to learn more about these and other topics to be featured during DevDays and to see the available locations.

What is that Accelerator thing? 

The Accelerator workshops during DevWeek are an unparalleled opportunity for you to learn and work intensively on a chosen project with help, support and training from Autodesk Cloud Engineering experts.  By investing a few days now you’ll save precious development time and accelerate your project development.  Instead of having to figure out or research a problem that could take days or weeks imagine being able to just ask an Autodesk expert. 

If you are serious about developing on Autodesk platform technologies and have not yet attended an Autodesk Developer Network DevDays Conference join us at DevWeek for a deep dive into the exciting range of new products and services.

DevDays is a traditional road show to a number of cities worldwide for the benefit of members of the Autodesk Developer Network who can register through www.autodeskdevdays.com.  However, we’re happy to hear from — and help innovators, forward thinkers and companies just getting started, so if you are not an ADN member and are interested in this event we invite you to contact us at [email protected].    view the information, locations and schedule at www.autodeskdevdays.com.  Please note material demonstrated and discussed at DevDays is highly confidential and under Non-disclosure Agreement.  

Hope to see you all of you there.

Cheers!!

AEC Hackathon and Creating Workset with Revit 2016 API

By Jaime Rosales (@afrojme)

TT Core Studio hosted their annual AEC Hackathon, the last weekend of September, and I was invited to join them as one of the Hackathon Leaders to help the participants with their new AEC app creations. Two days of hacking, pizza and red bull happened, delivering successful creation from the participants. I had a chance to show the LMV technology that Autodesk is promoting to make your web site 3D enabled, which also allows you to extract the valuable meta-data from your 3D models, and also, to partially join a team, while I helped others.

I will share with you a small summary of three apps that caught my eye and since I had a chance to help them or just heard their plan, I felt more identified with.
The first one will be the one I got to spend more time with, Augmented Reality BIM, the idea came out from the IKEA IPad app to place your new furniture with AR in your house, so together with a group of TT Core well known developers the hacking started. We even got that excited that we decided to trademark the idea and get the domain name for our project, check it out AugmentedBIM.com. It was definitely a fun experience to code along new awesome friends

The second one, who also won the Hackathon was the app called DOCQR using the Open Source Spectacles viewer and Revit API. The idea is to generate an open source QR code generator, that takes care of creating the URL to link to in order to view the model, and display it with Spectacles. Curious about it? you can read more about it here.

And the third one (secretly my favorite) was a set of plugins developed for Revit and Rhino that enable them to communicate with team members via Slack. This allows the model to alert users if something goes awry and giving a programmable interface for model management and maintenance. It is already available for you to play with and here is also more description about it and the link to their Github Repo.

Definitely it was a great weekend, You can check out the rest of the project’s here.

Back to Revit API, this week we hosted Revit Answer Days, which was a total success with over 900’ish posts, the only downside for us ADN is that we only had around 10 API questions, but I guess it was ok for being the first one. Again, congratulations on delivering great work from the entire Revit Team.

A post that I want to share with all of you today, came in the forum a couple of days ago, it is regarding the use of the New Workset API methods that became available not too long ago. The question came from user marcosmateo, here it is.

Question:Hi every one, I developed my addin Revit using c# 2012, this app creates a document Revit in a default route with a my custom template. I need create a new document with worksets included. In the window (app) the user must select the specialty, select path save file, write workset name and press "create file" button. the app will create a document with worksets. this is possible?, there are some example of how to do it? Thanks

Answer: Hi Marcos,Yes it is possible now to create a workset from the API, the method got introduced in Revit 2015 UR2 and is now available in Revit 2016.Here I'm providing you a small snippet of code that you can use in order to create a workset. If you want to know a bit more about Worksets and the API check this link.

public Workset CreateWorkset(Document document)
{
Workset newWorkset = null;
// Worksets can only be created in a document with worksharing enabled
if (document.IsWorkshared)
{
string worksetName = "New Workset";
// Workset name must not be in use by another workset
if (WorksetTable.IsWorksetNameUnique(document, worksetName))
{
using (Transaction worksetTransaction = new Transaction(document, "Set preview view id"))
{
worksetTransaction.Start();
newWorkset = Workset.Create(document, worksetName);
worksetTransaction.Commit();
}
}
}
return newWorkset;

Hope this helps you. Please let me know how it goes.

Even though Marcos didn’t reply, He accepted the answer as the solution so I will take that , he even gave me a Kudo, sounds like a win win for me.

Thank you for reading and until next time.

Autodesk Answer Days - Revit and Create a Roof from the API

By Jaime Rosales (@afrojme)

Autodesk Answer Days – Revit, October 7, 2015

Do you have any Revit® or Revit LT® questions that you’ve always wanted to ask?

If yes, then join the latest installment of Ask Autodesk Anything events on October 7, 2015. This event is dedicated to answering your questions about Revit and Revit LT. We’ll have some DevTech engineers attending the event to answer your API questions. The event runs from 6 am to 6 pm Pacific Time and will take place in Autodesk Community. Come spend a minute, an hour, or the whole day in the Autodesk Community to interact directly with the folks who bring this award-winning building information modeling software!

Click here for more information.

 

 

This week I have a chance to help a developer looking for a way on how to create a roof through the API. Interesting question since I don’t think I never tried that before so it was a fun piece to work on. Here is the question from our Forum community.

Question:  I'm having trouble to create a roof via code. I know how to create a stairs for example : I start a StairsEditScope and use CreateSketchedLanding with all the right parameters to create my stairs and just commit the StairsEditScope, but for a roof i cant find a clue on how to create it from scratch, any leads?

And if there isn't a way, for example: ceiling i know there isn't a way so i need to use a floor as a ceiling workaround. But for roof I don't have a workaround.

Answer:Here is a command to create a roof, Just make sure you have some walls to hold it and also one of your levels is named "Roof".

I created a simple 4 walls rectangle and the selected them and ran the command that I'm providing.

You can read more about this sample in the Revit Help file, here is the link.

#region Namespaces
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;
using Autodesk.Revit.ApplicationServices;
using Autodesk.Revit.Attributes;
using Autodesk.Revit.DB;
using Autodesk.Revit.UI;
using Autodesk.Revit.UI.Selection;
using System.Linq;
#endregion

namespace CreateRoof
{
    [Transaction(TransactionMode.Automatic)]
    public class Command : IExternalCommand
    {
        public Result Execute(
          ExternalCommandData commandData,
          ref string message,
          ElementSet elements)
        {
            UIApplication uiapp = commandData.Application;
            UIDocument uidoc = uiapp.ActiveUIDocument;
            Application app = uiapp.Application;
            Document doc = uidoc.Document;

            // Before invoking this sample, select some walls to add a roof over.
            // Make sure there is a level named "Roof" in the document.

            // find the Roof level
            FilteredElementCollector collector = new FilteredElementCollector(doc);
            collector.OfClass(typeof(Level));
            var elem = from element in collector where element.Name 

            == "Roof" select element;
            Level level = elem.Cast<Level>().ElementAt<Level>(0);

            collector = new FilteredElementCollector(doc);
            collector.OfClass(typeof(RoofType));
            RoofType roofType = collector.FirstElement() as RoofType;

            // Get the handle of the application
            Autodesk.Revit.ApplicationServices.Application application = doc.Application;

            // Define the footprint for the roof based on user selection
            CurveArray footprint = application.Create.NewCurveArray();
            
            ICollection<ElementId> selectedIds = uidoc.Selection.GetElementIds();
            if (selectedIds.Count != 0)
            {
                foreach (ElementId id in selectedIds)
                {
                    Element element = doc.GetElement(id);
                    Wall wall = element as Wall;
                    if (wall != null)
                    {
                        LocationCurve wallCurve = wall.Location as LocationCurve;
                        footprint.Append(wallCurve.Curve);
                        continue;
                    }

                    ModelCurve modelCurve = element as ModelCurve;
                    if (modelCurve != null)
                    {
                        footprint.Append(modelCurve.GeometryCurve);
                    }
                }
            }
            else
            {
                throw new Exception          ("You should select a curve loop,

                                                           or a wall loop, or loops combination

                                                           \nof walls and curves to create a footprint roof.");
            }

            ModelCurveArray footPrintToModelCurveMapping = new ModelCurveArray();
            FootPrintRoof footprintRoof = doc.Create.NewFootPrintRoof

            (footprint, level, roofType,out footPrintToModelCurveMapping);
            ModelCurveArrayIterator iterator = 

            footPrintToModelCurveMapping.ForwardIterator();
            iterator.Reset();
            while (iterator.MoveNext())
            {
                ModelCurve modelCurve = iterator.Current as ModelCurve;
                footprintRoof.set_DefinesSlope(modelCurve, true);
                footprintRoof.set_SlopeAngle(modelCurve, 0.5);
            }

            return Result.Succeeded;
        }
    }
}

Let me know how it goes.

Also the same question, or at least that is how it looks like, got asked in Stack Overflow. The answer this time came by our API Guru Jeremy Tammik. It is nice to see how we are covering same questions across different support forums for Revit API, I call that a great collaboration across forums. You are best of continuing your questions in the Revit API forum, but we are also looking out for those questions that get posted in other places, like Stack Overflow for example. 

Here is the response that Jeremy wrote in Stack Overflow.

Answer: Revit provides different kinds of roofs. It is best to understand the various types from an end user point of view before starting to drive them programmatically. The simplest one is defined by a horizontal outline. You can create a roof from such an outline using the Document.NewFootPrintRoof method. Such a roof can be flat, or you can specify a slope for each edge of the outline profile. The Building Coder Xtra labs provide a working sample in the external command Lab2_0_CreateLittleHouse in Labs2.cs:

https://github.com/jeremytammik/AdnRevitApiLabsXtra/blob/master/XtraCs/Labs2.cs

Here are some other roof-related posts on The Building Coder:

• RoomsRoofs SDK Sample
• Roof Eave Cut
• Creating an Extrusion Roof

I hope this helps.

Thanks for reading and until next time.

Another year wiser…I hope! Revit API: Check for WorkSharing environment, Get type parameters from a system family

By Jaime Rosales (@afrojme)

It is a special day for me today, since it is my Birthday (number will remain unknown) Let’s just say is my 21st part… (unknown). I’m not sharing this with all of you to wish me “Happy Birthday” or get extra attention, I just like to reflect on what the year that passed has left me and I take it as a moment of reflection on my failures, accomplishments and my needs and wants to learn from life and from topics that interest me such as technology.

Sharing a little quote with all of you today and then back to Revit API.

I want to share a couple of interesting questions that came up this past week in our Revit API forum community, if you haven’t seen it before, it is one of the greatest resources to solve your questions or simply chat with the community about the API. Here is the link.

The first question is from Mendo123 asking the community about how to quickly check if the user is working in a WorkSharing Environment. I know a lot of you probably already know how, but is it always to have this information handy for when we need it and also for our new Revit API developers.

Here is the question.

Question: Sorry if this has been asked but what is the easiest way of determining if the user is working in a WorkSharing environment?

Originally I was comparing the username against the doc.title but proved to be a very rushed and messy Idea.

The answer came by one of our legacy contributors to the Forum, Mr. Revitalizer. where he suggested the use of the bool check on the Document.

Answer: Document.IsWorkshared will do the trick.

Here is what the description on the RevitAPI.CHM file says on the property suggested.

Identifies if worksharing (i.e. editing permissions and multiple worksets) have been enabled in the document. Also, see IsDetached, which will check if the workshared Document has been detached.

Thanks Revitalizer for the quick and nice tip.

Next, the second question is about how to get parameters from a system Family eg. Keynote, asked by Anders.

Question:Hope some one can help me to get type parameters from a system family. I can get the instants like Area & Volume, but not eg. Keynote

With component families do I use eg Door.Symbol.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.KEYNOTE_PARAM); But I can't get it to work with system families like floors. Where do I fail ?? :-)

FilteredElementCollector FMFloorCollector = new FilteredElementCollector(OpenDoc);

FMFloorCollector.OfClass(typeof(Floor));

foreach (Floor FMFloor in FMFloorCollector)

{

Floor_Keynote = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.KEYNOTE_PARAM);

Floor_Family = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.ALL_MODEL_FAMILY_NAME);

Floor_Mark = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.ALL_MODEL_MARK);

Floor_Type = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.ALL_MODEL_TYPE_NAME);

Floor_Description = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.ALL_MODEL_DESCRIPTION);

Floor_Area = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.HOST_AREA_COMPUTED);

Floor_Volume = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.HOST_VOLUME_COMPUTED);

}

There were quite a few posts in response to the question, but one was selected as the accepted solution at the end. For those of you curious about it here is the link

to the complete question. Here is also the answer by peterjegan.

 

Answer: Anders, It looks like you are trying to get information from instances of a floor. You are not having trouble with instance-based parameters, but you can't get type-based parameters. I would suggest that you find each instance, get the instance-based information, then find the type and get the type-based information. I would suggest this:

foreach (Floor FMFloor in FMFloorCollector)
{
	//instance params
	Parameter Floor_Family = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.ALL_MODEL_FAMILY_NAME);
	Parameter Floor_Mark = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.ALL_MODEL_MARK);
	Parameter Floor_Type = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.ALL_MODEL_TYPE_NAME);
	Parameter Floor_Area = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.HOST_AREA_COMPUTED);
	Parameter Floor_Volume = FMFloor.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.HOST_VOLUME_COMPUTED);

	Element el = FMFloor as Element;
	ElementId typeid = el.GetTypeId();
	Element floortype = OpenDoc.GetElement(typeid);

	//type params
	Parameter Floor_Keynote = floortype.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.KEYNOTE_PARAM);
	Parameter Floor_Description = floortype.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.ALL_MODEL_DESCRIPTION);
}

Note that get_Parameter(string) is obsolete, but get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter) still works.

Thank you to our community of developers in the Revit API forum for the continuous collaboration on day to day questions with the use of the API.

Cheers, and until next time.

Guatemala LMV Tech Talks and How to delete Imported CAD files with Revit API

By Jaime Rosales (@afrojme)

At the end of August I had the chance to go to my home country to continue the evangelism on Autodesk new Large Model Viewer web service API. Always with the desire to give back part of my experience and knowledge to my home country, I decided to reach out to my Tech contacts in order to make these talks possible and expand my network with the Guatemalan Tech enthusiasts. The response I got from 5 of the Top Universities in Guatemala was simply amazing.

My Tech Evangelism tour started with #CampusTEC and Universidad Del Valle, where I had the opportunity to share how the Web is changing, and how Autodesk believes that 3D web should be something that starts taking over, we are a big 3D CAD design and software company, the tools exist and seeing the beautiful CAD designs that get created, should be available in your Web.

Later, during the week, I was made the opening Key note speaker at a great Tech Innovation Forum at Galileo University #FITGT, where I share my opinion and experience about Design, Education and 3D web, and how Design should be consider as one of the new pillars in education. With the many makers, we have around today, it just makes sense that these young enthusiasts get a head start shaping their minds to acquire great design skills and create new amazing things, in my opinion. A big thank you to Oscar Rodas. Adrian Catalan, Maria Zaghi and Yucely Beb for making these talks possible. 

After a successful day spending time with many innovators and makers from Guatemala, I went to Universidad Rafael Landivar, where an audience of 200 aspiring engineers (Mechanical, Civil, Software) were eager to learn about how to add their Inventor, Revit, AutoCAD models on their own website. Big thanks to Boris Ruiz for the organization of this great group of students.

During my last days in Guatemala, I had the chance to meet with the Director of the new Computer Science department at Universidad Francisco Marroquin, where I had the chance to present the technology to 1st year students of the CS department and many have already started to reach out, eager to know how to make their Web 3D enabled. Thanks to Leonel Morales for hosting me.

I see there is a lot of potential in Guatemala when it comes to the Tech Business, I will keep you up to date on how what I showed turns out.

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

Ok, enough of my traveling and evangelism experience, back to the Revit API. This week I had a chance to work and play with a command that deletes the imported CAD from your Revit Project. Something that got addressed by Harry Mattison from Boost Your BIM blog back in 2013. After seeing his nice post on it, I was curious to check if everything he shared will still work with Revit 2016 and sure it did.

Here is the question in our Revit API forum, posted by Vinay.

Question:Dear All,

Is there any possibilities of deleting imported cad through API.

Answer by Dale Bartlett: I have used this successfully:

Credit: http://boostyourbim.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/delete-imported-dwg/

 public void DeleteImports 
     (Document doc, bool pblnIncludeLinks) 
 { 
     using (Transaction tr =  
         new Transaction(doc, "DeleteImports")) 
     { 
         tr.Start(); 
         foreach (ImportInstance ii in new  
             FilteredElementCollector(doc). 
             OfClass(typeof(ImportInstance)). 
             Cast<ImportInstance>(). 
             Where(i => i.IsLinked == pblnIncludeLinks)) 
         { 
             doc.Delete(ii.Id); 
         } 
         tr.Commit(); 
     } 
 } 

Adding to the Answer: The suggestion that Dale gave you is a great one, But I see that only works for Earlier versions of Revit 2013 and earlier probably. I read the source from where he got it and I noticed that the Author also recreated it for 2014. I tested myself using Revit 2015 and 2016 and it seems to be working fine with the imported CAD files.

Credit: https://boostyourbim.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/looped-deletion-of-elements-in-2014/

Here is how the Command looks.

#region Namespaces
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;
using Autodesk.Revit.ApplicationServices;
using Autodesk.Revit.Attributes;
using Autodesk.Revit.DB;
using Autodesk.Revit.UI;
using Autodesk.Revit.UI.Selection;
using System.Linq;
#endregion

namespace testDebug
{
 [Transaction(TransactionMode.Manual)]
 public class Command : IExternalCommand
 {
  public Result Execute(
    ExternalCommandData commandData,
    ref string message,
    ElementSet elements)
  {
    UIApplication uiapp = commandData.Application;
    UIDocument uidoc = uiapp.ActiveUIDocument;
    Application app = uiapp.Application;
    Document doc = uidoc.Document;

    deleteImportsNotLinks(doc); 
          
    return Result.Succeeded;
  }

 public void deleteImportsNotLinks(Document doc)
  { 
    IList<ElementId> toDelete = new List<ElementId>();
    foreach (ImportInstance ii in new 
             FilteredElementCollector(doc)
            .OfClass(typeof(ImportInstance))
            .Cast<ImportInstance>()
            .Where(i => i.IsLinked == false))
    {
        toDelete.Add(ii.Id);
    }
    using (Transaction t = new Transaction
                    (doc, "Delete Imports"))
    {
        t.Start();
        doc.Delete(toDelete);
        t.Commit();
    }
  }

 

Thank you for reading and until next time.

Innovation Guatemala Meetup, Revit convert internal angle units.

By Jaime Rosales (@afrojme)

On Tuesday the 23rd I had the opportunity to present to an incredible variety of attendees at, a Meetup group called Innovation Guatemala, where different topics of Technology Innovation are discussed. I spent a couple of weeks talking to the organizers and had the chance to become the main speaker for that day, and show a bunch of Architects, Developers, Civil Engineers and Designers who code, what the Autodesk View and Data API is, and how cool would it be to start thinking in 3D for their mobile and web applications. The most interesting part was, even that I’m a native Spanish speaker, to give the presentation in Spanish was a bit challenging but they had such a great response to the technology I shared with them that night.

I started the presentation showing them who Autodesk was, since people don’t tend to be aware of all the great involvement Autodesk has in today’s technological industry. Their attention raised when I started showing what the capabilities the LMV (large model viewer) currently has. I showed and talked about the different uses of the API, from VR samples, Construction web applications, to real time collaboration using some of the attendees mobile devices so they can interact with it.

 

Filled of questions, the night went by so fast, after a talk that got carried away for 1 hour and a half, the networking with the different attendees started and after sharing a drink and some food the event was a wrap and a total success. Many thanks to the organizers of the Innovation Guatemala Meetup for making this possible.

Back to Revit API, I had a chance to work on a case a couple of weeks back and I wanted to share with you guys the solution for the developer.

Question: I'm trying to use the ConvertToInternalUnits() method in the Revit 2015 API to convert angles in degrees to internal units, which I assume are radians.

double degAngle = 45;
UnitType uType = UnitType.UT_Angle;
double intAngle = ConvertToInternalUnits(doc, degAngle, uType);
 

When I run the code above intAngle is set to 0.14763779527559054, but converting 45 degrees to radians should turn into 0.785398163. Where is this 0.14 number coming from?

Answer:Thank you for your query, For obtaining the Radians something like this will work better.

double degAngle = 45;
DisplayUnitType uType = DisplayUnitType.DUT_DECIMAL_DEGREES;
double intAngle = UnitUtils.ConvertToInternalUnits(degAngle, uType);

Let me know how it goes.

Response: Thanks a lot, that works perfect.

Thank for reading guys and until next time.