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Revit 2020 – MEP
by: David Raynor
Revit API Starter Kit ➲W
e all have some tedious, mundane tasks we would like to automate. Perhaps it is the dream button you have had on the wish list for years. Or it’s a company standard that just isn’t user friendly. Either way, you don’t want to spend your precious time on tasks you can do while mentally checked out. As an employer, you don’t want your employees unengaged in what they are doing when they could be performing valuable work. You also don’t want them to feel unvalued, being asked to spend their time on menial tasks. Automation provides a win-win for the team. But where to start? This article is intended to be a starter kit for programming. You’ll find lots of links throughout to help you along your way. I know this may be coming to you in a printed format, I like it printed myself, but for what we are trying to do here, I’d recommend looking up this article on AUGI’s website so the hyperlinks will work. I’m not 20
www.augi.com
going to pretend to teach you everything in one article. Rather, I want to give you the tools that will help you along the way. First let’s discuss the various flavors of programming with Revit®. For many tasks you don’t need a full blown programmed add-in. Dynamo is all the rage these days, but it is not without its own drawbacks. There are also macros, with pros and cons, and then there are full blown add-ins that take a bit more to get going, but with many advantages the others lack.
Dynamo Dynamo (Figure 1) is one way to get the power of programming without having to code at all. It is called visual programming. It now comes free from Autodesk and is installed with Revit. It comes with a large supply of commands, known as nodes, that can get you going pretty well. Soon after you start playing with Dynamo you’ll discover other people are generously donating their October 2019