Revit 2009 API: What's New?

Welcome to another fun episode of discovering what's new in the Revit API. The 2009 edition presents us with a long, long list of enhancements - and while most of people's long-standing complaints have not been addressed - there's certainly something in there that will make you happy individually.

This is the first of a variety of postings I'll write on the API and what's new in 2009. In the other articles, I'll go into further detail... in this one, I'll summarize the highlights - as well as cover some of the features that don't fall neatly into one of the other articles.

Some of the topics we'll cover are:

• Searching Improvements


• Rooms for Improvement


• New Element Creation
  
• VSTA: What does it mean?


• MEP Objects


• Parameter Improvements


• The AddIn Manager


• The Hidden Features
  

Beyond those in-depth topics, you can look forward to:

Printer/Paper Settings

The 2008 API introduced printing capabilities, which was great - however, they didn't have time to get the printer settings/paper settings in - so you could only print to whatever the default settings were... making this not so useful in practice.

2009 adds full support for Printers and Paper Sizes - almost every option on the Print Dialog is supported - and special support is offered for virtual printers (like DWF and PDF).

Exporting

While 2008 introduced DWF and DWG export support, 2009 introduces support for export of GBXML (for Green Building Studio, and others) and FBX (for 3DSMax - and others)- both with a good list of options available during export.

IsModified

You can now determine if a given document has been modified since it was last saved (useful if you're writing a Data Management system, or if you just want to know if you need to save before you exit).

External Applications

It is now possible to see, from the application level, all of the registered applications inside of Revit. While it's hard for me to imagine what you can use it for beyond writing an "Add-In Manager" - I'm sure there's something...

Selection StatusPrompt

If you tried adding selection to one of your applications - well, let's just say it wasn't very "smooth" as User Interfaces go. A good step in the right direction is the new Document.Selection.StatusBarTip property, which lets you put text which appears in the status bar (as well as a tooltip on the mouse - just like regular Revit!). This makes it a little easier to tell people what you want them to select (or how they "get out of it" - hint: click on Nothing).

Summary

All in all, there's a lot to wrap your head around - Come back for more details as the months progress...

-Matt