An oddity with Drafting View mirroring

So I was asked if it was possible to mirror a drafting view using the API (apparently the built-in project mirroring doesn't cover drafting views).

It seemed straightforward enough... so I wrote a quick test... and it didn't work...
- it worked fine in a floor plan view
- it didn't work in a drafting view
- the code completed just fine - it just didn't really seem to show any difference.

My initial code is below...
- Get all the elements in the current view
- Use the new ElementTransformUtil class to figure out which could be mirrored, and mirror them.

FilteredElementCollector coll =
new FilteredElementCollector(uiDoc.Document, uiDoc.ActiveView.Id);

IList elems = coll.ToElements();

// make sure that stuff can be mirrored
List toMirror = new List();

foreach (Element elem in elems)
{
if (ElementTransformUtils.CanMirrorElement(uiDoc.Document, elem.Id) == false) continue;
toMirror.Add(elem.Id);
}

So why did this complete successfully, but not show any difference?
The answer is one of those great undocumented elements in the wilds of the Revit database. When I looked in the debugger at what I was actually attempting to mirror, I saw this:

What I see here is a mystery element called "ExtentElem" which is being copied. I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be telling the view the actual extent of what is in it... So how can we exclude it? well - it has no actual category (which is probably a sign that in general we don't want to mirror an element like that!).

So - we add a line like:

if (elem.Category == null) continue;

and voila! we have our drafting view being mirrored.

I wish that I could say that all Revit database mysteries are "easily" solvable like this - there's plenty of times where you just run into a wall, and can't get to what you want... but today's story has a happy ending!

DWFplus for Revit 2012

Well, it has been forever since I've last posted... I missed the release of the 2012 API and a variety of other announcements. But I'm trying to get back on the horse.

To that end - a quick video to show what I think is a cool new feature of our Utilities for Revit 2012 product - a new utility called "DWFplus".

If you've ever looked at distributing a DWF file, and figuring that Revit ought to be making it chock-full of all my BIM data... you may have been slightly disappointed. The rules for when Revit published a parameter or didn't were arcane - and I'm still not sure if we've accurately reverse engineered them. And certain features like hyperlinks... how is it that AutoCAD can have hyperlinks but not Revit!

So DWFplus is an attempt to change that. It starts with a regular DWF export, but adds in a variety of neat stuff:

• All parameters (or selected parameters) that you want to publish


• Parameters are attached to Tags - not just the elements


• Includes 2D Hyperlinks for any URL parameters (even multiples)


• Parameters are published in 3D as well as 2D.


• Includes some neat 3d viewpoints for 3D DWF views.

Here's a little video to demonstrate:

Note: IMAGINiT Utilities for Revit is available here, and is free for clients that keep their Revit subscription with IMAGINiT.