Revit API Expert Roundtable: Open House on the Factory Floor

BORIS SHAFIRO: OK, my name is Boris Shafiro, software development manager with Revit team. Currently I also facilitate so-called Revit API Guild, pretty much the developers that carry out the development of Revit API, and monitor other teams that developed Revit API. I've been with Autodesk for 15 years, and I've been with Revit longer than it was called Revit. So I started in '99 as a software developer, then software development manager. So chances are I know some of the functionality that you're going to be asking about, but if we are not able to answer your questions or help you right away, we definitely can continue over the email, so please don't hesitate to ask. Thank you.

RAHUL BHOBE: Hello, I'm Rahul Bhobe. I worked for Autodesk for 10 years, all 10 of them for Revit development. Various features like families, groups, length, work sharing. Recently moved to cloud services for Revit development and use the Revit API for that. That's about it, I guess.

DIANE CHRISTOFORO: They're already on, great. Hey. I am Diane Christoforo. I am a developer slash team manager. I've been at Autodesk for 12 years. It was my first job out of college, so it's all I know. I am going to apologize in advance for the number of times I'm going to answer a question with, oh, yeah, that's my team, and it's not exposed.

[LAUGHTER]

SASHA CROTTY: Thanks, Diane. So I'm Sasha Crotty. I am the Revit core product manager, and that means that I am the product manager for the Revit platform, the Revit API, C4R, and Forge design animation API for Revit. So all those things, from product management perspective, that's my fault. I've been working with the Revit team for 12 years. I actually started as a developer, so my background is in development, and so I moved on to product management about six years ago.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: My name is Miroslav Schonauer, or shortly, Miro-- that's what most people know about me. It's going to be 18 years in February. And I started, actually, in developer technical services, so I was there long time before Augusta joined, few years before Jeremy joined, even. And I think in that role, if I'm correct, I presented the first ever Revit API lecture at AU. It was 2005, with Emile Kfouri, who was then first API manager.

But since then I moved to consulting from the first day, so for last 12 I'm in consulting. Usually worked on solutions that need heavy customization, and I specialize in all [INAUDIBLE] API products. So not just Revit, but AutoCAD Civil 3D, used to be AutoCAD Architecture. Now also getting little bit into Forge.

KEITH WHITE: OK, my name is Keith White. I've just learned that I need to go first the next time we do this. So previous to working for Autodesk-- I've been with Autodesk almost three years now-- I was licensed architect before, so heavy user of Revit since about 2004, 2005, turned programmer, so I've started writing add-ins for Revit, developed some suite of tools that are being sold and presented here at AU for a couple of years. Joined Autodesk as a part of Autodesk Consulting, and like Miro, I work with clients from, really, all over the world, answering questions, helping to develop tools, stuff like that. So I don't know if I can offer much more than what they're going to offer, but I'm here to help.

SASHA CROTTY: We have a brave soul.

AUDIENCE: Hi. We are starting a project now where we are importing some very large plant models, and we are looking into producing diverse shapes for that part. Very simple, have it as simple, easy as possible. And we talked about perhaps over 100,000 parts in there. Will there be any performance issues in Revit with-- I tried to make 100,000 squares and that was fine, but this will be a bit more complex.

BORIS SHAFIRO: OK, you import what kind of files to create direct--

AUDIENCE: We will read the geometry, how we will use--

BORIS SHAFIRO: Oh, you use the API to create them from scratch using the direct builder, right?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] it would be something would be [INAUDIBLE] because it's complex geometry, but it will be a-- it's an entire plant so lots of elements.

BORIS SHAFIRO: Well, the biggest thing to remember working with imported geometry in Revit is one key issue of scale. Revit, from the bottom up, was designed as the modeler for architecture. So there is a range of numbers with which Revit works good with geometry. So very small details and very large numbers that could represent 40,000 miles or 1/15 of a millimeter, these are the extremes that could make your geometry is not work correctly in Revit, or have some really serious performance degradations.

There are recommendations of what is considered the reasonable range of numbers for geometry in Revit, and this is pretty much architectural scales. Let's say something from half an inch to, I think it's 30 miles or 40 miles, something like that. So these are the length range that you should operate within.

In terms of performance of direct shapes, we don't even have too much experience with that yet. Direct shapes per se is pretty much new functionality. So we did do everything to ensure correct performance, but we definitely need to try and see how it performs at that scale.

SASHA CROTTY: So let me-- to add to that, I think one of the things that, certainly, if you're importing direct shapes, a Revit model can have that many number of elements. So it doesn't concern me. 100,000 elements is not something that strikes me as concerning. We can certainly handle that overall, and certainly with direct shapes. You saying that there are some meshes in there that may potentially cause some performance problems, that would be certainly something we'd be interested in hearing about, saying, look, when I bring these in this changes performance by a factor of x. I think that is a little bit of a learning experience for us, as Boris mentioned. But I think we'd like to learn and actually see if there's something we can do if there is a performance problem. I would hope that there isn't.

AUDIENCE: I will let you know.

[LAUGHTER]

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: If I just [INAUDIBLE] something from a purely consulting and process standpoint, I've been using the direct shape just to visualize, sometimes, things in Revit. For example, internal 3D room shape elements that-- I've been actually working with Quincy, who is here also in the room. And it's very quick to create element, but one thing I would just warn you is you can't attach any shared parameters to it, to direct shaped elements.

So if you want to import the whole model with direct shape elements, I would a little bit question is that the best way to use Revit, because if you can't add content, if you can't direct shapes, I'd like maybe to hear what is your business use case to see if maybe it can be done in a different way. So technically, it's definitely possible, but is that the best way to do what Revit does, we'd have to look into that from a non-technical view, from the business process, I believe.

AUDIENCE: Are you sure that you can't attach shared parameters to this? [INAUDIBLE] have done that.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: I'm pretty sure. That's why I wanted to warn you.

AUDIENCE: But if--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: I mean, that's--

SASHA CROTTY: Well, is that-- OK. Anybody know the exact answer?

BORIS SHAFIRO: Well, there are two different objects. I just want to make sure if you're talking about direct shapes or there is shape-- what is it called? There is another element that can be modified. But direct shape geometry, once you create it, it is not modifiable in Revit.

SASHA CROTTY: No, it's not geometry where you can add shared parameters to a direct shaped object.

BORIS SHAFIRO: I think it's possible.

SASHA CROTTY: I thought it was as well.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Maybe the new version. I mean, I think in 2017, definitely not.

BORIS SHAFIRO: One last thing, because there are many more questions, I hope. Yeah. One last thing. In terms of performance, if you have many elements with identical geometry, please make sure that you use direct shape type and direct shape instance. It definitely would boost performance because it is a lightweight representation of multiple elements with the same geometry.

SASHA CROTTY: Yeah, both in terms of storage and graphical representation and drawing.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: To help you to find what's the same, there are some utilities in IFC toolkit, I believe. In IFC there are some utilities to help you to find what is the same. I think I've looked into that once. It was quite useful. Something that Angel exposed while he was doing IFC for exactly the same problem, that if you have a repetitive thing, you don't create many instances, but just create one type and instantiate it many times.

AUDIENCE: But would it be best-- if I grouped them, with it be best to use group or assembly? What [INAUDIBLE]

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: No, no, it's not about group and assembly. If the geometry same, you create just the direct shape type and then reference many instances of the same type, rather than always making one type in one instance, one type in one instance. I think that's what Boris was saying.

AUDIENCE: But I would like to group them. If I am to group them, would there be any performance issues between the grouping or assemblies or is that--

BORIS SHAFIRO: I would say it's probably similar. So--

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

BORIS SHAFIRO: No big difference here.

AUDIENCE: One of the problems I'm running into is this code signing when you're dealing with a single site, and you have to go out and buy a separate item so you can sign your code so that 2017 and on doesn't tell you, I don't recognize this publisher. And they've improved it to remember until you reboot your system, at least, for me. Next time I reboot the system, it forgets and it pops up 15 times. And I want to have 30 different standalone items and I have to keep putting them into groups with buttons that tell the user which one they want to use, and I'd rather just have them all load immediately.

But it seems to me that it should be somewhat automatic, if you have a site license for Revit that anything I've developed will load. There should be some functionality so that you don't have to make your own-- you don't have to go buy the code signing thing.

SASHA CROTTY: So Augusta, do you know where the Forge team is in supporting code signing? Yeah. So I think there was some discussion around the Forge team. I mean, as far as Revit is concerned, all we're checking for-- so it's stored in a standard Microsoft storage for signatures, so certainly should not pop up again after you restart. So that would be something to address, probably, with Microsoft, rather-- or figure out why that is not getting registered, because they basically track signatures and they get stored--

AUDIENCE: I don't have a signature.

SASHA CROTTY: Oh, OK. You don't have-- yeah, you don't have a signature.

AUDIENCE: --get one. I thought If you're only developing for one firm, you shouldn't have to go get a signing service to provide something to you, and have an annual license or something to keep it up to date if you're only going to be using it in one location.

KEITH WHITE: So if you're developing for yourself you should be able to develop it without signing your assemblies. Then when you load it for the first time inside of Revit, it'll prompt you that this is an unsigned assembly and you trust it.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

KEITH WHITE: That act right there, it goes and publishes that certificate into a place in your Windows system that then, Revit sees the next time you start Revit.

AUDIENCE: It doesn't seem to remember that.

KEITH WHITE: Then that's a problem, maybe, with Windows. And I think that Jeremy even has some posts on the building coder that references some of those problems. And it may be Windows permissions base that's preventing that certificate from being written to that directory, but it's not normal for that to continually present you with that dialog. It should be once--

AUDIENCE: --now is I modify my code, I replace my DLL.

KEITH WHITE: OK, so then that has a new signature. That DLL now has a new signature, so it no longer matches--

AUDIENCE: --that, but I'm saying when I come in the next morning and start Revit then it gives me the same warning, and I--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: It's not the same DLL.

KEITH WHITE: Right, so when-- exactly.

AUDIENCE: No, I mean after I use it in the afternoon, I come in the morning, I already said I trust this, the next morning it might then--

KEITH WHITE: Then that's--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: That's another problem. Yeah.

KEITH WHITE: That's a Windows issue, not a Revit issue. Because Revit is making use of those Windows services to check for that certificate.

AUDIENCE: I can answer that one, actually. It's a group policy on the network protocol.

KEITH WHITE: It's a group policy on the network that restricts users from being able to either write to the registry or being able to write to the certificate store. So you would need to edit your group policy to allow that. And also, you can create your own certificate if you want to self-sign. You don't have to pay for one if you're doing it only on your own domain.

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

Is there a way to programmatically place keynotes at all? Like I've delved into the API and--

BORIS SHAFIRO: No. I checked specifically.

DIANE CHRISTOFORO: No, I'm sorry. That's my team, it's not exposed.

[LAUGHTER]

BORIS SHAFIRO: No, no, no, but first of all, thank you for asking, because it seems to be that it's just-- somebody didn't noticed that it was not exposed. So thank you for noticing, and I had to check the documentation yesterday to confirm that because it was supposed to be there. It is not. So we definitely try to address it at some point.

DIANE CHRISTOFORO: Now I'm working on design automation, in all honesty.

AUDIENCE: So that's planned to be implemented, then?

BORIS SHAFIRO: Well, that's exactly what we are not supposed to see here.

SASHA CROTTY: Well, we can talk about what is-- we can talk about what is and isn't on the roadmap. I can't tell you when that roadmap stretches to. I can't tell you dates. It's not, right now, something that is on the roadmap. That said, this is kind of an opportunity for me to do the little spiel about Revit ideas. So we do, actually, look actively for Revit Ideas. If you guys haven't-- have you guys all heard of Revit Ideas? Yes? OK, good. autodesk.com/revitideas, pretty easy to find.

So what you do is you can record your kind of wish lists or requests on there and vote for them. And a lot of the time I hear from the API community, saying, oh, there's not that many of us. We can't get the votes. You don't have to get to the top of Revit Ideas. There are a lot of people in this room. If every single person in this room voted on something, that would make it to the top of the API list.

And so it is actually something that we actively look at to identify, especially for APIs that are things that just haven't been exposed for whatever reason, because of legacy implementation, those are the kind of things we really try to pick off as many of those as we can. So I believe there is a keynote one on there. If there's not, please do file one and vote for it. It is really important to make sure-- because it's one place where we have a repository of all ideas, and that's really helpful to see. I had another point but I forgot.

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

KEITH WHITE: And I would add to that to say that what she was talking about with the Revit Ideas, don't just go there and post your request and then leave and never come back. It's a community, right, so as a user, prior to becoming an Autodesk employee there were ways to give feedback and give good feedback. And they listen. So there were opportunities where I was able to talk to some developers and had a suggestion and it was an easy suggestion, and it made its way into the product sooner rather than later. But they really care.

But you need to go back. And if you see someone else's idea, upvote it. So get some attention to it. So it's a part of this community. They're working really hard to create a product that works for, really, everyone in the world. No matter where you are, it should work for you to the greater extent. So it's our job to help them be aware of something that they weren't aware of before.

SASHA CROTTY: I figured out-- thank you, that is a really good point. And in terms of new projects, you guys probably have seen one of the requirements for teams going forward for the last maybe three, four years has been anything-- any new functionality must have an API completely. So we must be able to write our UI on top of the API. For some teams that's actually a requirement as well. So we do actively make sure we have APIs for any new work we're doing. But Revit Ideas is really helpful to go back and say, this part is missing-- you can do this in the UI but you can't do it in the API.

AUDIENCE: Hello. I wrote an add-in for our company that is a room tagging add-in. Is it on? Hello?

SASHA CROTTY: Yep.

AUDIENCE: Oh, sorry. It's a room tagging add-in. And provides a nice user interface, lets them select the views they want, pick the tag they want, couple other properties in there, and even does sheets. It'll just take whatever sheets you say, figure out what views are in there, and tag it. Great tool, works well when the rooms are in the model, in the current model.

But if you were looking at the way we work, most of the rooms are coming from an architect in a link model. And there's a room property on the tag. And fine, it shows up when it's in, but if it's a link model, that property is null. So you have no way of knowing through the API if you selected a tag, what room that's associated with. That's a problem. I have a workaround for it. I put some extended data on it that points to that room. That's one problem.

And then the second problem is there is no way to determine if you have dependency views, where there's a clipping plane and you've got a small portion of a room-- you can't tell link models if it exists in that view. So you have a room in a link model, there's no way to query all the rooms and say, oh, am I in this view? And my hack-- I'm sorry, my workaround--

[LAUGHTER]

--was I create the tags first, all of them, and then I can ask, hey, is this tag in this view? If it's not, then I just delete it. And that's kind of a-- before I put that change in here, I didn't realize this thing was creating tags that were orphan. I mean, they were still associated with a room, but you just couldn't see them. So I was wondering, is there any going to-- I've seen posts on it before, where it was a wish list thing on being able to show the room reference from a tag.

SASHA CROTTY: Do you want do you want to take this one, Diane? I think there's-- in addition to just the room-specific functionality, I think there's certainly opportunity for us to actually work better with link files and being able to reference link elements, and I think that is fundamentally something that's not very well exposed in the API at the moment.

DIANE CHRISTOFORO: I'm sorry.

[LAUGHTER]

I don't-- no, no, no, no, no, no. No, in all seriousness-- no, you're right. There are a lot of places where things started working with links in the UI that didn't work and we didn't add it in the API either at the time, because it was too long ago, or because we didn't think that it-- didn't notice it didn't work. No, you should be able-- we have a classical link element ID that lets you refer to elements in a linked model. I think we're at the point where we would have the ability to expose that value and say, like, oh, this is in a room in a link. But we don't right now. Make sure it's on Revit Ideas if it's not already. If it is, vote for it. We slowly determine that my team owns everything that isn't exposed.

SASHA CROTTY: Well, I'm guessing most people would want the functionality with links. I mean, who here doesn't? Anyone not want link functionality?

DIANE CHRISTOFORO: Who's like, I don't care about link. No.

SASHA CROTTY: Right, that's why I thought. So everybody vote on that idea.

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

Hi. I have problems with Raycaster because sometimes it fails to identify the nearest surface to intersect, especially with the topo surfaces. So I need to know if there is any precautions I should take to make sure that the Raycaster will find the nearest surface to intersect, and if there is a way to filtrate which category or family that I need the Raycaster to intersect with.

SASHA CROTTY: So--

BORIS SHAFIRO: I think, if I may, I think, especially with the topo surface, if it is not a regular Revit surface, if it is a mesh, Raycaster would not correctly find it. Right?

AUDIENCE: OK.

BORIS SHAFIRO: So just make sure there are different ways to create the topo surfaces. Is it always mesh, or sometimes? That's what I don't know, but one thing is for sure. If it is a mesh, Raycaster does not see it as a regular surface.

AUDIENCE: OK.

BORIS SHAFIRO: If it is a surface then it should be fine.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

BORIS SHAFIRO: So that's the first thing to check.

AUDIENCE: OK. So if I want to filtrate the type of elements that I need the Raycaster to find, is it possible through the API, or is it not possible?

BORIS SHAFIRO: I don't remember.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: I think you can-- if I remember vaguely, you can pre-filter. You can pass pre-filter selection to Raytracer. I mean, I vaguely remember from some sections--

BORIS SHAFIRO: Oh, you mean you can create just regular element filter and pass it as an argument to Raytracer.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: I think so.

BORIS SHAFIRO: That's probably the way to go. And actually, element filters, they are quite powerful. You can use a lot of different criteria, parameters, categories, and everything else. So check it out. It should be one of the input arguments.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: We're talking about same thing, but I think we are. Shoot us an email. We can confirm this.

AUDIENCE: OK, OK. Thank you.

I'm having trouble importing shared parameters to system families. The code works perfectly for every other type of object except systems.

SASHA CROTTY: So you should add them, I believe, as project parameters that are shared. That would be the-- to those categories, I think.

AUDIENCE: Is that the only way?

SASHA CROTTY: I believe that is the only way to add shared parameters to--

BORIS SHAFIRO: When you say systems do your mean system families or do you mean--

AUDIENCE: System families. Because I can actually attach-- I can go through the same process of temporarily switching the shared parameter file to the one I've got, attaching that parameter name, the shared parameter to the category, which works fine with system categories. The trouble starts when you try to set that parameter and it says it's not a type parameter. That's the error you get.

BORIS SHAFIRO: It should be exactly the same whether it's a system family or if a-- there is absolutely no difference. If that category appears in the UI when you say bind category, then so there is absolutely no difference in behavior in systems.

AUDIENCE: Oh yeah, the binding works perfectly. But when you create that-- when you bind that parameter, which starts off as empty, then when you try to put something into it, that's where you get the error. So the set function doesn't work.

KEITH WHITE: So when you're binding the parameter, you should determine how-- you decide how to bind it, as a type parameter or as an instance parameter.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, that goes through fine, but the next step, when you try to set that parameter, put some text in it, that's when it fails.

KEITH WHITE: Yeah.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: I think, vaguely, I had hit this problem. You have to finish the transactional binding before you try to attach it.

AUDIENCE: So you have to start another transaction?

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Yeah, I think so. I think that's the problem.

KEITH WHITE: So what you do is you have to go and insert all your parameters first, and then you have to go back and start to edit the data. So you have to finish the transaction of inserting and mapping [INAUDIBLE]

AUDIENCE: Oh, so you end the transaction and then you start another transaction in the same plugin?

KEITH WHITE: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so whenever I've done that in the past, I just blanketly insert all the shared parameters I need, finish the transaction, then I start iterating over whatever elements I want to effect with the new parameter value, and then it'll work. So you're caught in a situation where it's technically-- and they have the technical terms, but it's not recognized in the database yet, so you can't affect the data in that parameter until the transaction is closed.

BORIS SHAFIRO: Yes, it's actually one of the best recommendation for any API development for Revit. Please remember that closing the transaction, the only state of inconsistent data in Revit is between opening the transaction and closing the transaction, because then you just randomly changed some data, created some objects, and the only way to bring Revit model into the consistent state is closing the transaction, which automatically calls regenerate.

And that action actually causes everything that depends on your changes to recalculate. So you bring model back to consistent state by closing the transaction. So sometimes consecutive changes need to be done in separate transactions. This is probably one of the cases.

AUDIENCE: Thank you

BORIS SHAFIRO: It's not recommended.

AUDIENCE: And regard to-- just one more little one-- with regard to actual family parameters, not shared parameters, but family parameters, embedded in family-- at the moment the only way I can create them is by automating the keyboard mouse combination to go and click on an object to-- so you click on an object, then you automate the process of clicking on Edit Family, open it up, then you import it in and then you click Close and then window pops up, you scroll up and click on Import. That's a long process. Is there a way to speed that up without having to open the family for editing?

BORIS SHAFIRO: Well, I'm not sure. Maybe Paolo knows. You've done a lot of work with the family editor, Paolo, so you may answer. He should be here. Paulo is our expert on Dynamo, but uses a lot of API, and expert on--

AUDIENCE: Sorry, actually, I didn't quite follow. I'm sorry.

To create a conventional family parameter, not a shared one, there is no way of doing that without opening the family for editing first. So you have to be in the family editor before you can do it. And the only way I can do it is by automating the keyboard mouse combination to click on it, to edit it, and--

There is actually no-- because the family is a document, OK, probably not too much technical here, it's like a document. So you can open in the same application. So when you're pointed to the family object from the RVT file you can actually call the edit family method. So this [INAUDIBLE] the application, and then you can do whatever you want as if you were dealing with the UI, without the UI though.

But when you close that family object, the editor window, then you get a window coming up saying, would you like to load that into the family, that's when you have to go through the keyboard automation to click that.

OK, so there is a slightly more technical thing to do. So you need to create-- you need to inherit from an interface the load family options, and from there you need to say what you want to do. In this case-- so for example, you want to disregard the values, or then you share families that you may have in the family document you're editing, and once you decide how you want to deal with these objects, then you can just save the family and reload it directly in the document, the RVT file. So you don't have to go through the pain.

Oh, I see. So it's a pre-selective answer to a predicted question, is it?

So there is an overload that asks you--

Oh, an overload. OK, great.

Yeah there is an object to load an option, load family option object that you need to create by yourself. So it's a separate class that you need to inherit from an interface. And you have two kinds of methods that you need to implement, being an interface. So you can decide how you want to deal with new values or new shared families.

Thank you.

RAHUL BHOBE: Just one question. You do have to load it separately, make the changes, and reload it even in UI. I mean, right now we do not support changing family contents from inside projects.

AUDIENCE: Also you have to then offload that family and reload it again.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Yeah. You don't have to upload.

AUDIENCE: Or you just reload, right?

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: You just have to call load, that Paolo said, and when you call load there is signature, you say do you want to override parameters. But you can do everything programmatically. You shouldn't be able to--

AUDIENCE: You shouldn't have to send keys, then.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Right, Yeah.

SASHA CROTTY: Yeah, there's a full API to edit the family, modify it, load it, without any user interaction whatsoever.

AUDIENCE: Fantastic. thank you.

SASHA CROTTY: But to Rahul's point, yes, editing the family is necessary because it is a separate document and there's actually a lot of stuff that happens during load that's not just copy pasting. There is actually elements that move between the two different-- it's really complicated, but--

AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.

So the one in the back was first.

I have kind of a quick one. We have an add-in. We used the AVF, we use the markers on text style to display basically a grid of numbers in Revit. We were hoping to extend that to also show contour lines that follow the numerical data, and we found that the AVF doesn't really support that. There's the shaded option but there's no actual just lines. I was just wondering, is there any other approach we could take besides using the analysis framework to show contour lines?

SASHA CROTTY: Yes.

AUDIENCE: Oh, good.

BORIS SHAFIRO: 2018.

SASHA CROTTY: Yeah, 2018, and if you have really detailed questions about how to do it, talk to Alex right here in the front. So there is something called the direct context API. This allows you to draw any kind of graphics that you want directly into Revit. Revit doesn't care what you draw because we don't actually look at what you draw. We just draw it-- we push it to the graphics card. So it's really powerful. It's actually what we use to implement the-- what's it called? Coordination model, yes, thank you. Navis underlay.

In other words, yes, so coordination, that's actually using that API to push those graphics. Navis underlay was actually our initial implementation, kind of try it out and test out that API, but that API is really, really flexible.

AUDIENCE: And I guess just a follow up to that. When using the AVF, we've noticed we've had all sorts of problems with printing the results. The numbers get clipped and things like that. Well, this new direct context API, do you anticipate it would have similar problems, or is it a completely different graphics thing?

SASHA CROTTY: You want to try?

AUDIENCE: I can try to answer that question. So direct context is completely different from AVF, so there is a good chance that your problem is solved. I'm not sure about text, if you're referring to printing text. Maybe we should talk about that separately.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] numbers.

AUDIENCE: Right, numbers. And another thing, so direct context graphics are produced using rasterizations. So they can be printed in the raster format only. Perhaps you should expect that.

BORIS SHAFIRO: And last point, quick one, if you do want to use AVF, there is something like contour lines. Because if you're using the option called colored surface, you can use the gradient color that corresponds to the values you put on the surface, or you could use the solid colors. And pretty much you set the ranges and it does draw lines in between them. So these are your contour lines. So there is a way to do something like it, not exactly. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

BORIS SHAFIRO: Yeah

AUDIENCE: It's just not exactly [INAUDIBLE]

BORIS SHAFIRO: All right, yeah, just whatever's there. OK, there are questions in the back.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

So yeah, just short question. Revit API is really bad at working with materials. For example, it's still not possible to assign material to the column from the API, even in 2018, so here's the question. Do you have any plans to improve it, and when actually can we get something like that?

BORIS SHAFIRO: Well, there are different aspects of this question. Let me make sure. One, biggest improvement for materials was done in 2018 and they present it tomorrow. It is now possible to modify visual appearance of materials through API. It was a long-standing request. But you're asking about different thing. So how you assign material to a column. Column means family, right?

AUDIENCE: To different elements. For example, I cannot assign material to specific element. Not to the whole category.

BORIS SHAFIRO: Well, again, unfortunately does depend what the element is. If it is the family instance, for example, I think the only way to change the material, you need to open that family for editing, pretty much similar to this procedure, and figure out how materials assigned there, assigned material, and reload the family.

For, for example, for walls, it's totally different API how you assign materials. You assign materials to layers. So in many cases, it is specific to the element. So there is no unified way to assign material to an object. That's definitely so. Yeah.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Just one quick question. So when you say to column, do you mean to instance of the column. Do you see--

AUDIENCE: Yeah, the column was created programmatically as well. There was such back in Revit 2016, and it was said that it was fixed, but actually, I still cannot assign material from the API.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Have you got material in the list of parameters for that column?

AUDIENCE: Let's say I have some custom material.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Because if you have--

AUDIENCE: I want to trade material in assigned--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: If you have a material in the parameters for that either instance or type, you should be able to look through parameters, that parameter will be of element ID, and then you can assign other elements ID for materials, and it should work. Unless there is a bug.

BORIS SHAFIRO: Well, something tells me that this is probably some bug that you found. I mean, yeah, because it is-- whatever it is, we will definitely need to see the specifics. So is there something that is not done, and-- is it discussed on Building Coder or anywhere? Probably the easiest way, just shoot us an email.

AUDIENCE: OK, all right. Thank you.

BORIS SHAFIRO: Thank you.

AUDIENCE: All right. I think the answer is probably no, but I'll put this out here. So this kind of goes off some previous questions about editing families. Like I understand that you need to edit the family to actually edit it, but what I'd really like to be able to do is just sort of replicate the project browser level, like I don't need to do things to the families, but a lot of the tools I'm writing are batch processing tools and tools that are like trying to modify a lot of families, so I have a project that's got like 4,000 families with seven levels of nesting and I want to modify all the families of a certain category.

So right now, as far as I know, there's no easy way of finding all-- including nested families, all the families in the project that are of a certain category. So having some way of, just sort of at a metadata level, determining that there are all these annotation families, that the only way you'd actually see that as a user is by opening and editing the nested levels of families.

SASHA CROTTY: OK, so not shared nested, just regular nested.

AUDIENCE: Regular nested families, where as a user the only way you'd find that out is by editing the family, right? So I mean, I can programmatically recursively go through the entire model and open and close every single family to determine that. But it'd be nice if there was just sort of a simple map that said, at a high level, there's all these families with these names in this category, for instance.

SASHA CROTTY: The problem with that is that is-- sorry, not speaking properly. The problem with that is that nested families actually do not exist in the project environment. There is no reference, so the project doesn't know that those families exist.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

SASHA CROTTY: Which is why--

AUDIENCE: I understand. I just think it would be nice if the family itself just knew at a very high level of what families it contains. Not like the actual functionality or the parameters, but just the name, I contain these nested families and those nested families know that they contain these nested families with this name and category and is it shared-- so basis set of five parameters that identify that this exists so that you could use that as a tool to determine, oh, that exists down in that level. This is a tree I need to go parse down through and go find. Rather than what I'm doing now is just go through everything, basically, open and close every single family in the project to find the three families that happen to be nested.

SASHA CROTTY: OK.

AUDIENCE: Right.

SASHA CROTTY: Yep. [INAUDIBLE]

AUDIENCE: Hi, how you doing? My question is more about integration of spec sheets into drawings. So the problem that we're having is we have our spec writers that wants to control to spec sheets in a Word document. These spec sheets can spread over 12 drawings. So we have a workaround where we export and import images and do that. Do you have an interface where you can work better with Word over several sheets?

SASHA CROTTY: We do not. I think there are a number of partners that do actually provide something along those lines. So that's certainly worth taking a look at what's out there from partners, some of them who may be in this room. I think that's probably the best short term solution. The other thing is, usually what we say from the [? Revit ?] perspective. We certainly don't want to store all that information in a Revit file, right? We want to say you can have access to all that information, but a Revit file;s probably not the best repository for it. So that's also something to think about. How do you externally, potentially, reference them rather than trying to include them directly? Again, it's worth having a conversation, a slightly longer conversation that we can have here about what your workflow is and why those spec sheets can be included directly.

AUDIENCE: The question came about because normally people have a smaller project, which, you don't want to go through the whole process of getting a big spec book, so it's just a quick way of referencing something. So for anybody who's here that know how to integrate that, please talk to me afterwards.

Hi. We have an add-in which creates legends in Revit, it but it's a little bit of workaround to create a new legend. We have an empty one which we copy and then modify for our needs. Is there any way that is going to change in the near future?

SASHA CROTTY: So there are a number of legends requests in Revit Ideas. So I don't think we have anything concrete that I can think of on the roadmap right now in terms of changing that. Certainly I know that there are a number of requests around legends, so it's something we may consider investing in going forward. The challenge, of course, is the minute that we touch legends, there are about a million requests that people have for changing them. And it's, you know, why didn't you do my request, kind of thing.

But that doesn't mean that it's less important to do that. And certainly automating processes, like being able to create them more easily, seems like a very, very reasonable thing to do because that means that we actually have to do less in terms of legends.

AUDIENCE: Yes, because I have two other questions for it. In the latest version of Revit there's an Excel function called find reference by name for family instances. That's working great, but if you create a legend you have no family instance. You just make a symbol. But how to find a reference on a symbol? There is no find reference by name on a family symbol. It would be nice, if it was possible, so we can create our measurements automatic. Now we can only do that in [INAUDIBLE] because there we have a family instance, but on the legend we don't have that.

SASHA CROTTY: Yeah I think that's part of the reason that we're a little bit hesitant to enhance legends because they're not really-- they're not really real geometry that you can measure and treat that way, so I think that's part of the problem that we have, and that's kind of my understanding, is that the geometry is actually representational. Am I not right, anybody?

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Yes, it's mostly pretty picture, but it doesn't have a lot of information in it. I don't think even-- does the legend have named references at all?

AUDIENCE: No, no, because the legend component is just a family symbol, so not a family instance. So that's why I find reference by name is not available. I can do it by hand. So I thought if I can do it through the Revit UI, so there must be a way I can do it through the API, but that's not the case at the moment.