Description
Revit software’s External Services framework enables developers to tailor the behavior of built-in Revit software features to the level that was not possible with conventional external command-based add-ins. External Services have been used as a base to support customized MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) calculations, access externally stored data, replace built-in export/import filters, and many other features in Revit software. As Revit software continues to grow there are new external services introduced with every major release, which gives developers new opportunities to provide their solutions on top of the Revit core functionality. Unfortunately, this feature has not been well adapted by the external public yet, quite possibly due to the lack of comprehensive documentation—which is exactly the gap this class will attempt to fill. We’ll explain the framework’s main ideas and clearly illustrate the most anticipated uses. We will also present a hands-on coding approach as an example of a simple MEP friction calculator.
Key Learnings
- Learn how to identify all the parts that make up the Framework of External Services
- Discover the framework’s main workflows, expectations, and limitations
- Learn how to find, organize, and use built-in external servers and services
- Learn how to design and implement a custom server for a published service (e.g., a MEP friction calculator)
Speaker
- 7B77257kmim80iace7 Bnk5gx8bm6cwnyw6Arnošt Löbel is a sr. principal software engineer on the Revit Dev. Team. He joined Autodesk, in 2006 as a new member of the growing API Team, and since his first day, the API has been his primary focus and passion. His major contributions to the API include the transaction framework, events, dynamic updaters, external services, and API safety firewalls. He is also an API adviser to several Revit Teams and he contributes to the API design those teams produce. He frequently contributes to several Revit forums and blogs, where he tries to resolve customers' trickiest of problems. Arnošt has a master’s degree in structural engineering, but has been focusing primarily on software development for a long time. He relocated to the United States from his home in the Czech Republic almost 2 decades ago. He and his wife now live near Boston, Massachusetts. If he is not writing Revit software code or helping others to write their code, Arnošt is likely to be found bicycling or talking about it.