Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Revit 2009 API: The AddIn Manager

One of the nice additions to the Revit 2009 SDK is the "AddIn Manager" tool.


As background, for those of you who don't know - Revit still uses a 1990s-era REVIT.INI file, with four lines per command to register your Revit external commands, ie:


ECCount=3
...
ECName3=Door Mark Update
ECDescription3=Revit Door Mark Update Utility
ECClassName3=DoorMarkUpdate.Command
ECAssembly3=C:\projects\Avatech\RevitUtilities\DoorMarkUpdate2009.dll


This, combined with the application startup time for Revit, contribute to some occasional pains in getting external commands set up (whether by developers or CAD Managers).

What's New?

The Add In Manager application is itself a Revit External Command, and is accessed (after installation) on the Tools + External Tools menu:





The AddIn Manager shows you what external commands have been registered with Revit, as well as giving you the ability to Load a new command at Runtime (NO MORE EXITING OUT!) and Saving changes to your REVIT.INI file.


Chuck Han had done something like this a year or so ago - but it was mainly for outside of Revit - not something that you could load into Revit after Revit had started. So this is a welcome addition - anything to make the process go more smoothly for Revit Users and administrators!


By the way, the AddIn Manager also handles External Applications:





-Matt

7 comments:

Steve said...

A welcome addition! I like the app manager/launcher that RoboBAT provided for their tools too and it is good to see this develop for Revit overall!

Rod said...

this is good but it really isn't what I was hoping for... wheres our XML :(

Alot of us have already developed our own solutions to this problem - this has just made our work obsolete without actually improving the process too much.

Jose Guia said...

Rod, .. I would have to agree, .first thing I thought when I saw this was WOW, . an INI front end, how Windows3.1 (minus the 8-color icons).
But somethings better than nothing!

I kicked your post over to :
http://cadkicks.com/adkrevitarch/CAD_Application_Development_Revit_2009_API_The_AddIn_Manager

Anonymous said...

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Just check it out to make sure my description of you is accurate. Thanks for the site.

-Brian

bgcallam said...

Matt - Very excited to find your blog. There is a big future for programming in architecture/design/etc and revit 2009 is a big step in the right direction.

I sincerely hope that the "democratization" of technology that you described in an earlier post will include (or may even require) an open source element. I am never one to criticize people for making a few (or many) bucks off their work, but I feel like a large reason that "scripting" in apps like Rhino and Maya has been inching its way toward the mainstream is the growing abundance of examples and tutorials available for the newbie. I'm crossing my fingers that we can expect the same trend as the revit API continues development.

Looking forward to reading more!

- BC

Unknown said...

Hi,

When I click on Tools, Macro And AppCSharp and Edit or New, I've got a fatal Error!
Whereas I click on DocCSharp, it's ok!!!

Any Idea?
See post in Augi here :
[url]http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=82972[/url]

Matt Mason said...

Pierre,
I saw your post on AUGI... I don't have any particularly good idea, other than to re-install VSTA...

-Matt