Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Revit 2008 API: What's New

OK, the cuffs are finally off... we're allowed to talk about the Revit 2008 API...
There's so much that's new, I'm going to tackle it in a few different postings, just to spread things out a little bit.

Until now, most developers would have characterized the Revit API as "immature" - but Autodesk has taken a variety of important steps to change my view of the API in this release. The door has been opened for Revit to perform a wide variety of new, more interesting tasks.

Some of the enhancements to the Revit API that I'll cover include:

  • Interactive Element Pick/Select
  • DWG/DWF/Image Import/Export
  • Working at the Application Level
  • Printing and Saving
  • New Element Creation
  • Elements Promoted to concrete classes
  • More access to parameter and other data within elements

Anyone who has developed Revit applications or has been thinking about it should be excited at all of the new capabilities to work with in Revit 2008...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

do you have any information regarding api enhancements that would allow connecting a device such as 3dconnexion spacenavigator?

revit didn't allow programatic viewport rotation, pan etc. and 3d control devices wouldn't work. (according to this thread http://www.3dconnexion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=89)

Matt Mason said...

I believe this still to be true - it can't be done (we also do some work for 3d motion controller companies - so I was specifically interested in this. The documentation still says that the EyePosition and ViewDirection are ReadOnly. That said, on rare occasions the documentation has been out-of-date, and I haven't had a chance yet to poke at it and confirm it.

Disappointing, I know.