Learn to program the Revit API by Boost Your BIM

Name: Learn to program the Revit API by Boost Your BIM
Rating: 4.1 (224 reviews)

Learn how to customize, automate, and improve Autodesk Revit software.

Created byHarry Mattison

Last updated 3/2019

English

What you'll learn

In this course, you will learn how to write Revit API code in the C# language to perform a wide variety of tasks.

Course content

8 sections • 47 lectures • 6h 26m total length

Introduction: A Simple Macro5:28
Prompt user to select an element & get element info6:56
Prompt the user to select an element and retrieve data from that element.

The "Exception Handling" lecture is recommended to learn how to handle the user pushing the ESC key during a selection prompt.
Prompt user to select edge or face & get edge/face info7:18
Selection - getting and setting selected elements8:28
Get the elements selected in the Revit UI and use the API to set which elements are selected.
Find Elements - FilteredElementCollector #114:59
Find elements in a Revit model using filters by Class (such as Wall or FamilyInstance) and Category (such as Door and Window)
Find Elements - FilteredElementCollector #215:01
Find elements that are visible in a specific view.

Find elements whose bounding box is inside a 3D space defined by two mouse-clicks
Find Elements - LINQ queries6:37
Use LINQ (Language-Integrated Query) syntax to develop more sophisticated queries of elements in the Revit model
Find Drafting Views that contain a CAD Link11:40
Identify drafting views that contain cad links using the Rivet lookup tool, then filter imports, check is linked, and list unique drafting view names hosting linked cad.
Create an External Command6:41
Create an external command using Visual Studio Express
Family Types and Parameters8:55
Create family types, family parameters, and set parameter values
Get Line Length and Convert Units16:08
Get the length of multiple selected lines and convert their total length from feet (Revit's internal units for length) to the project's units

Read and Write Text Files14:09
Revit macros to read and write text files
Directory and Path operations7:45
Find the TEMP folder and the My Documents folder, combine folder and file names, and find all files in a folder.
Read from Excel into a Revit API external command12:31
Read data from Excel into a Revit API external command
Write Revit data to Excel6:45
How to write Revit data to an Excel file in a Revit API external command.

Includes using the Process.Start command to open a file in its default application.
You can get the EPPlus component for Excel read/write with NuGet (https://www.nuget.org/)

"An essential tool for any modern development platform is a mechanism through which developers can create, share, and consume useful code. Often such code is bundled into "packages" that contain compiled code (as DLLs) along with other content needed in the projects that consume these packages.

For .NET (including .NET Core), the Microsoft-supported mechanism for sharing code is NuGet, which defines how packages for .NET are created, hosted, and consumed, and provides the tools for each of those roles."

In Visual Studio go to Tools - NuGet Package Manager - Manage NuGet Packages for Solution - then browse for EPPlus. Select EPPlus by Jan Kallman

Or you can download the DLL from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q1ZnRpK4XLdstVzbK3oUc0Qf61-3kLIA/view?usp=sharing or attached to this lecture. If you do that, be sure to unblock the DLL (right click on it in Windows Explorer, select Properties, Unblock) after downloading it.
Exception Handling7:35
How to handle exceptions (errors) that occur while running your Revit API code.
Code Reuse and Helper Functions13:57
How to write and reuse functions that make your code easier to update and maintain with fewer bugs.
Obsolete Members2:33
What it means when a member of the Revit API is marked "obsolete"
Creating Windows Forms for User Input14:32
Create a Windows Form dialog to allow the user to enter information that will be used by an API command

Delete an element - Intro to modifying the document6:53
How to modify the Revit Document and delete an element
Create text note and get and set parameter values13:10
Create a text note
Set parameter value & Check parameter storage type6:45
How to check the type of a parameter (string, integer, double, element id) and set its value
Built in parameters4:48
Get data from a Revit element using Built In Parameters
Collecting element area and keynote properties12:33
Create wall4:05
Learners will learn to create a wall with the Revathy API, using document, a curve for endpoints, a level, and a yes/no boolean that specifies if the wall is structural.
Create Family Instance (Furniture)9:49
How to create a Furniture family instance
Create Family Instance (Door)10:53
Element Rotation5:10
Get Workset of an element5:54

Set Project Units8:07
Change the project units in Revit by accessing the units object, selecting length and volume format options, and applying millimeters and cubic meters within a transaction.
Selection Filters12:14
How to prompt the user for a selection and only allow selection of specific categories
Events11:30
How to register an event to automatically run Revit API code when specific actions occur in the Revit session.

The DocumentSaving event is demonstrated in this lecture to show how to create and update a log file with the time of save and the user's name.
Ribbon UI - tab, panels, buttons10:33
Create a ribbon tab, panels, and buttons with an external application
Write comments to the journal file3:01
Extensible Storage13:19
Store data in Revit elements that is accessible only via the Revit API
Reference Intersector8:21
How to "see" in the Revit model by shooting imaginary arrows and finding out what they hit
Dynamic Model Update7:41
How your API code can automatically react to user changes in the Revit model

Description

This course is for people who want to do more with the Autodesk Revit building information modeling software.

You can do a lot of great things with Revit as it ships "out of the box" from Autodesk, but there are still many tasks that are repetitive, boring, and error-prone. There are also many situations where you can be more effective and productive if you can add additional functionality to Revit.

This course will cover a wide range of topics in the Revit API. Each topic will be taught by walking through a set of C# code samples that progress from the basics to more advanced concepts.

More content will be added to this new course in the upcoming weeks. If you see a topic that you like added, just let me know and I will try to make that addition.

Who this course is for:

Revit users who want to do more with Revit.
No programming experience is needed. Novice programmers may find it helpful to supplement this course with some of the many free resources online.

Learn to program the Revit API by Boost Your BIM

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Revit API Basics11 lectures • 1hr 48min

.NET, C# and general programming basics8 lectures • 1hr 20min

Element Operations10 lectures • 1hr 20min

Element Geometry3 lectures • 31min

Debugging Revit API Code2 lectures • 12min

Intermediate / Advanced topics8 lectures • 1hr 15min

Source Code from BoostYourBIM blog posts2 lectures • 2min

Responses to Questions3 lectures • 1min

Description

Who this course is for: