Instant Autodesk Revit 2013 Customization with .NET How-to [Instant]: A supercharged guide to creating your own plugins, add-ons and customizations for Revit with .NET

82 Pages·2013·1.35 MB·English

by  Don Rudder

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Instant Autodesk
Revit 2013
Customization with
.NET How-to
A supercharged guide to creating your own plugins,
add-ons, and customizations for Revit with .NET
Don Rudder
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
www.it-ebooks.info
Instant Autodesk Revit 2013 Customization
with .NET How-to
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
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First published: January 2013
Production Reference: 1220113
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84968-842-0
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Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Don Rudder Abhishek Kori
Proofreader
Reviewer
Ting Baker
Harlan R. Brumm
Production Coordinator
Acquisition Editor
Aparna Bhagat
Andrew Duckworth
Cover Work
Commissioning Editor
Aparna Bhagat
Priyanka Shah
Prachali Bhiwandkar
Technical Editor
Varun Pius Rodrigues Cover Image
Valentina D'silva
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About the Author
Don Rudder is the Director of Software Development at CASE and focuses on the creation
and management of specialized software and add-ins for various applications developed for
client support. With over 16 years of experience in the AEC industry, Don has served well over
10 of those years as an HVAC and electrical designer for various MEP firms. He later began
to focus more heavily on software development and related support where he eventually
ended up in San Francisco serving as BIM Manager for HOK. He is self-taught in some 14
programming languages and well versed in .NET, web-based AEC tools, and pretty much any
kind of automation. Don has also presented at Autodesk University and the Revit Technology
Conference of North America.
Don has been the contributing author of the API chapters for Mastering Autodesk Revit
Architecture 2011, Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012, and Mastering Autodesk
Revit Architecture 2013.
I would like to thank my rock star friends and coworkers at CASE for just
being awesome and bringing me into their mix. Without them, I would
probably still be buried too deep in insignificant obligations without any real
time to share stuff like what's in this book.
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About the Reviewer
Harlan R. Brumm has a wide variety of experience within the architecture, engineering,
and the software industries. He's been involved in training development, technical writing,
program management, product management, and customer support. He has presented and
taught internally to coworkers, at industry conferences, and at Autodesk University. Harlan
worked for civil engineers and architects in the midwestern United States as an intern, CAD
manager, and a project manager. His passion is the intersection of architectural design and
technology.
He is an avid blogger and active in social media discussing all things BIM. Follow him on
Twitter: @HarlanBrumm.
To my wife, Catie, and daughter, Maloa, for letting me take on many projects
and supporting me to finish them.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Instant Autodesk Revit 2013 Customization with .NET How-to 5
Getting started with the Autodesk Revit 2013 API (Must know) 6
Creating a simple command (Must know) 16
Adding a custom push button (Must know) 17
Element filtering (Must know) 24
Accessing the ProjectInfo data (Must know) 29
Extracting data (Should know) 31
Changing values (Must know) 40
Adding and removing parameters (Become an expert) 43
Creating plan views (Must know) 46
Creating a schedule (Become an expert) 50
Creating sheets and placeholders (Must know) 53
Placing views on sheets (Become an expert) 58
Wall color by length (Become an expert) 62
Subscribing and unsubscribing to events (Should know) 69
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Preface
Welcome to Instant Autodesk Revit 2013 Customization with .NET How-to. This book will walk
you through several of the Autodesk Revit 2013 API features in an easy to follow step-by-step
process using powerful code samples. Each of the included code recipes have been designed
to help get you right into some of the most common features of the Revit 2013 API.
What this book covers
Getting started with the Autodesk Revit 2013 API (Must know), introduces the fundamentals
necessary to understand how add-ins get loaded into Revit and the basics for each of the
three supported add-in project types.
Creating a simple command (Must know), describes a "Hello World" style introduction to
Revit add-ins.
Adding a custom push button (Must know), describes how to make your own ribbon tab and
add a basic push button used to launch a custom command. A brief textbox control sample
is also discussed showing how to react to the TextBoxEnterPressed event.
Element filtering (Must know), introduces two different ways to filter elements in a Revit model.
Accessing the ProjectInfo data (Must know), describes how to access an element of a
specific category and how to read data from properties bound to the element.
Extracting data (Should know), shows how to iterate over a set of elements within a common
category and export values for specific parameters to an external CSV file.
Changing values (Must know), describes how to access element parameters and update
their values.
Adding and removing parameters (Become an expert), describes how to load new shared
parameters into the model and bind them to a category by name.
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