After the first part where we explore how to build an Revit addin for the Design Automation API, we can now upload and run this addin on the Forge server. Part 3: Create the application on Forge After creating a new Forge App with the Data Management API and the Design Automation API, we use the Postman definitions provided here to create our Design Automation application. We need to create a bundle, a package containing our Revit addin to upload it on the cloud. We create the folder structure in our solution, then add the following to the post-build event in visual Studio xcopy /Y /F "$(Tar ..read more

I recently published a new version of my RVT To IFC online converter. Among other modifications, this new version now uses the Autodesk Design Automation API instead of the Model Derivative API. What is this Design Automation API? It is a set of features of Autodesk Forge to run a Revit add-in on the cloud. Instead of executing an add-in on your own Revit on your local computer, you upload this add-in on the Autodesk Forge server where it is executed in a Revit engine specially designed to run in this environment. It allows you to manipulate Revit files without having Revit locally installed ..read more

A while ago, I created an online conversion tool to transform Revit files to IFC. At the time, I wanted to experiment with the Model Derivate API of Autodesk Forge. I published this small service for free and made use of the free Tier of my Autodesk Forge account to allow anyone to use it. This solution ended up being more successful than I expected and my free Forge credits where quickly depleted. Since I can’t really fund the conversion of every Revit file in the work, I had to stop the service. However, it seemed to be a valuable solution for a lot of people without a Revit licence. So, I b ..read more

I have finally found the time to update Group Clashes, my Navisworks plugin for grouping clash results. The app now supports Navisworks version from 2016 to 2021. Along with the update, I added a new grouping mode called “Model”. This mode will help you grouping clashes in a test containing elements from multiple models. In my example below, I run a clash test between structural walls (Selection A) and all services (Selection B). In the Selection B, we have elements coming from 3 models (Duplex_Plumbing.rvt, Duplex_Mechanical.rvt and Duplex_Electrical.rvt). I select this clash test in the Gro ..read more

Over the year, I have built a collection of applications around BIM. These tools range from Revit plugins to fully-fledged web applications through small desktop utilities. I present these tools in a blog post as they come out. But these posts get quickly buried in the (quite alternative) amount of content on this blog. So I created a new Product page. In this page, you will find all piece of software produced in a neatly organized table. Each solution come with its own page describing it. You will also find here a link to download or open it, a link to the source code if it is available and ..read more

Like many other in the AEC space, I have been following the development of Townscaper, the town-building game made by Oskar Stålberg. Behind this game, there is a lot to learn on how to generate building geometry. One of the main algorithms used in this game is the Wave function collapse algorithm. Initially developed for generating images from a small input, its principle can be applied to a lot of use cases, like town planning, wedding seating plan and even poetry. The main idea behind the Wave Function collapse algorithm start from a grid. On this grid, we place an element from a list (a li ..read more

One of my relative recently buy a Cricut Maker and I had the opportunity to play a little bit with it. The Cricut Maker is a computer numerical control cutting machine design to cut small parts out of paper or fabrics. Its small scale make it mostly suited for hobbyist to create any kind of small production with paper, fabrics, leather, and balsa wood. Along with the cutter, the Cricut Maker can also be equipped with pens or other kind of tools My ideas behind this was to see how to plot Revit drawing with a “hand-draw” feeling to it. I also wanted to create small paper model from a pattern ..read more

I released last week a new version of my dynamo package DynamoMEP. To help you around the new features, I build a few samples making use of these nodes. Get the opening side of a door Among the new nodes, the FamilyInstance nodes allow you to use family reference. These references give you access to reference planes contained in the family. In this example, I show you how to use these references to find if a door is opening inside or outside of the room. In all door families, I make sure that a “Front” reference plane is positioned on the opening side. In the OOTB Revit families, such a refere ..read more

A few years ago, I released a Dynamo package that was intended to be the groundwork for a comprehensive solution for designing MEP systems in Revit. But as I move on to another company, I oriented myself to other BIM-related issues and let this package unattended. But a quick exchange with Sol Amour about MEP in Dynamo make me realized that people where still using my package. So I should at least update it for the latest versions of Dynamo. One thing leading to another, the update end up being more important that I had initially planed. I add a bunch of new functions that I needed and hope wi ..read more

After a first article where I introduced you to both Airtable and DynaWeb, we go on using web API with DynaWeb. In this post, we see how to create more complex request. Retrieve a specific record If we want to retrieve a specific line in our Airtable, we need to add to the URL the id of the line we are looking for. So, to retrieve a particular record, we must get before the list of all record with their id. We will need two requests, one for the list of records and one for the specific request. A request can be slow, so we need to wait for the first one before using its result (the list of re ..read more