Code vs Node: The Ultimate Revit Automation Smackdown!

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BILT North America 2017 Westin Harbour Castle Toronto August 3-5 Session 1.

Michael Kilkelly AIA, ArchSmarter Class Description So, you want to learn how to automate Revit. Great!

This session will take an in-depth and entertaining look at Code (Revit macros) versus Node (Dynamo) and put

About the Speaker: Michael Kilkelly AIA is the founder of ArchSmarter, a website dedicated to helping

1 BILT North America 2017 Westin Harbour Castle Toronto August 3-5 Session 1.5 Code vs Node: The Ultimate Revit Automation Smackdown! Michael Kilkelly AIA, ArchSmarter Class Description So, you want to learn how to automate Revit. Great! But what method should you use? This session will take an in-depth and entertaining look at Code (Revit macros) versus Node (Dynamo) and put them through a series of automation challenges. See who wins this ultimate smackdown! About the Speaker: Michael Kilkelly AIA is the founder of ArchSmarter, a website dedicated to helping architects and designers work smarter, not harder. Michael is also a principal at Space Command, an architecture and consulting firm in Middletown, CT. Previously, Michael was an associate at Gehry Partners in Los Angeles. Michael received his B.Arch from Norwich University and his MS in Design and Computation from MIT.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to Code vs Node: The Ultimate Revit Automation Smackdown! This title match will consist of three rounds of Revit automation challenges! Let s get ready to rumble!

2 Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to Code vs Node: The Ultimate Revit Automation Smackdown! This title match will consist of three rounds of Revit automation challenges! Let s get ready to rumble!!! Code vs Node Want to get Revit to do some of your work for you? Interested in automation but not sure where to start? You re in the right place! The purpose of this session is to take a side by side look at Dynamo and Revit macros and put them through their paces in a series of automation challenges. In doing this, we re going to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms as well as why you might want to use one vs the other depending on the task. My goal for this session is to help you determine which automation method is best for you based on how you learn, the task you want to automate, and how the automation is going to be used. Some Things to Consider When considering automating a task in Revit, think about the following: Page 2 of 29

Who is going to make use of the automation? What s the skill level of the people using it? How repeatable is the problem you re solving? Is the problem well-defined or is it fuzzy?

3 Who is going to make use of the automation? What s the skill level of the people using it? How repeatable is the problem you re solving? Is the problem well-defined or is it fuzzy? While you can essentially automate the same tasks in Dynamo as you can with Revit macros, the circumstances of your project or your firm may make one method more applicable than the other. As with most things, context matters. We will come back to these factors at the end of the session. Let s go ringside for the tale of the tape. What is Dynamo? Dynamo is a visual programming environment for Revit. It is open source software and available for free to Revit users. You can download the software at DynamoBIM.org. A paid stand-alone version, called Dynamo Studio, is also available. Dynamo Studio does not require Revit to run. In Dynamo, you assemble programs graphically rather than writing code. Outputs from one node are connected to inputs on another. A program flows from node to node along a network of connectors. The result is a graphic representation of the steps required to achieve the end design. Page 3 of 29

Dynamo files are called graphs and have a.dyn file extension. They are very lightweight files. Note that Dynamo must be installed in order to run a graph. You cannot run graphs outside of Dynamo.

4 Dynamo files are called graphs and have a.dyn file extension. They are very lightweight files. Note that Dynamo must be installed in order to run a graph. You cannot run graphs outside of Dynamo. Also, Dynamo associates itself with whatever is the current Revit model when it is launched. In order to run a graph on another file, you must quit Dynamo, make the new file active in Revit, then relaunch Dynamo. Dynamo has an extensive library of user-created nodes. These nodes are freely available and the node library can be searched directly from the Dynamo interface. Nodes are downloaded and installed to your local computer. Graphs using custom nodes require those nodes be installed on the local computer in order to run properly. What are Revit Macros? A macro is a user-created command that is coded using Revit s API. Macros are run directly inside of Revit and are saved in the project file. Other applications, like MS Office, provide the ability to record macros directly from your actions on the screen. Unfortunately, Revit does not have this functionality. You must code your Revit macros directly. Macros are created using Sharp Develop, Revit s built-in coding software. Macros can be written using the C#, VB.Net, Ruby, or Python programming languages. Macros must be compile before they can be run so they typically run much faster than similar Dynamo graphs. Page 4 of 29

Since they are written using a programming language, macros can incorporate elements of a user interface. Also, macros can be translated into add-ins that are accessible from the Revit add-ins ribbon.

5 Since they are written using a programming language, macros can incorporate elements of a user interface. Also, macros can be translated into add-ins that are accessible from the Revit add-ins ribbon. The Revit API Both Dynamo and Revit Macros make use of the Revit API. Anything you can do with a macro is possible in Dynamo... at least in theory. To get started with either Dynamo or Revit macros, you should install the Revit SDK. The SDK (software development kit) contains help files and sample code that will assist you as you learn to automate Revit. The SDK can be installed from the main page of the Revit installer or it can be downloaded from the Autodesk Developer Network at The most useful part of the SDK is the Revit API help file. The help file is a roadmap to understanding the API. It lists all the methods and properties that are exposed through the API. The help file can be intimidating as first. It s not an easy read. However, with practice, you ll find it an invaluable resource. Page 5 of 29

Automation Challenges The best way to compare Dynamo with Revit macros is to put the two platforms through a series of challenges and see how they stack up.

6 Automation Challenges The best way to compare Dynamo with Revit macros is to put the two platforms through a series of challenges and see how they stack up. We re going to work through three rounds of automation challenges to highlight the differences and similarities between code and node. Round 1 The first automation challenge consists of changing Revit text notes from lowercase to uppercase. This would be extremely tedious to do manually. However, this task is very easy to automate. The steps that we re going to use are the same for both code and node. They are as follows: Get all text elements in the current model Loop through each element Change text case to UPPER (or lower) Let s see how we do this in Dynamo and as a Revit macro. Round 1 Dynamo First up is Dynamo. To start, we launch Revit, open the file on which we want to change the text, then we launch Dynamo and create a new graph. Page 6 of 29

The graph we re going to create is very straightforward. All it takes is three nodes. Here s what it looks like: 1. FIrst, we specify a category using the Categories node.

7 The graph we re going to create is very straightforward. All it takes is three nodes. Here s what it looks like: 1. FIrst, we specify a category using the Categories node. We set the value of this node to Text Notes. 2. Next, we connect the node to All Elements of Category. This selects all the text notes in the current file. 3. We re going to use the TextElement.ToUpper node to change the text case to upper. This node is part of the Clockwork library. Click Packages in the menu bar and search for the Clockwork package. Once it has downloaded, search for TextElement.ToUpper in the search field on the left to find the node. Drag the node onto the node window and connect the output from All Elements of Category. 4. That s it! Switch over to Revit to see your text in upper case. If you want to change all your text to lower case or title case (capitalize the first letter of each word), choose the appropriate node from the Clockwork library. Make sure you disconnect any other text nodes before you connect a new one. If you don t, Dynamo will get caught in an infinite loop, forever changing the text to upper, then lower, then upper... until you force close the program. That was easy. Let s see how we d do this in a Revit macro. Page 7 of 29

8 Round 1 Revit Macro Now it s code s turn. To start, open a new Revit file. Go to the Manage ribbon and click the Macro Manager icon to open the dialog. 1. In Macro Manager, click Module to create a new module. Modules are containers for macros. A single Revit file can have multiple modules each containing multiple macros. Give your module a name. Module names cannot contain spaces or special characters like punctuation. Next, select a programming language for your module. You can choose C#, VB.Net, Python, or Ruby. I ve found that VB.Net is very easy for beginning programmers so that s the language we ll use. 2. Once you create the module, Sharp Develop, Revit s built-in code editor opens in the background. Back in the Macro Manager, click Macro and enter TextToUpper as the name for your new macro. Like module names, macro names cannot contain spaces or special characters. 3. Switch over to SharpDevelop. In the code editing window, you ll see Sub TextToUpper(). This is out macro. You can delete the other two subroutines, Module_Startup and Module_Shutdown. 4. The first thing to do with any macro is to define the current Revit document. Macros can run on the macro file containing the macro, or on whatever is the current file, which is more useful. The define the current document, type the following: This defines a variable called curdoc as a Document object and then sets its value to the current Revit file which is represented in code as me.application.activeuidocument.document 5. With the document defined, we can now select all the text elements. To do this, we ll use a Filtered Element Collector. This object collects all the elements in the current Revit file. We can then filter the collector for the specific elements we need. To create the collector, type the following line: 6. To filter the collector, we re going to specify the Text Notes category through the.ofcategory line. Page 8 of 29

Let s test our code and make sure it s collecting the text elements. Below the collector code, add the following: 9. Unlike Dynamo, Revit macros need to be compiled before they can be run.

9 7. The Revit API includes objects for all the built-in categories. When you start typing the code, SharpDevelop will pop-up an Intellisense dialog where you can select the specific category, rather than having to type it out. 8. Let s test our code and make sure it s collecting the text elements. Below the collector code, add the following: 9. Unlike Dynamo, Revit macros need to be compiled before they can be run. Compiling the macro converts it from VB.Net into Microsoft s runtime lanaguage. To compile the macro, go to Build on the menu bar and click Build Solution. i. 10. If your code has any errors, you ll see them down in the Error window located below the code window 11. If you didn t get any errors, switch over to Revit and go to Manage > Macro Manage. Select the TextToUpper macro and click the Run button. You should see the following dialog box in Revit: 12. Provided there are some text notes in the current model file, you should see a number indicating the number of text notes. 13. Switch back to SharpDevelop and delete the TaskDialog line of code. Since we know our collector is working, we now need to loop through the text notes and Page 9 of 29

10 change their text to upper. To create the loop, we re going to use a For Each loop. Add the following code to your macro: 14. The For Each loop goes through all the elements in the collector. The current element is assigned the curtextnote variable. I can refer to the current element inside of the loop using this variable 15. We re going to change the text to uppercase inside of the loop. Add the following code after the For Each line: 16. Because we re making a change to the model by modifying the text, we need to lock the model so the change can take place. We do this using a transaction. The transaction gets created before the code that makes the change. After the code that makes the change, we ll then commit the changes to the model and dispose of the transaction. If we try to run the macro without a transaction, we ll get an error in Revit. Before the For Each loop, add the following code: 17. This code creates a variable for the transaction. We have to specify the document we re working on as well as a name for the transaction. The transaction name is what appears in Revit s undo menu. 18. After the For Each loop, add the following code to commit our changes and dispose of the transaction. 19. Go to Build > Build Solution to compile the macro. Switch over the Revit, go to Manage > Macro Manager and run the macro. The text changes to upper case! 20. To change the text to lower case, switch back to SharpDevelop. Highlight the TextToUpper code and copy it to the clipboard. Below the code, paste another copy. Change the macro name to TextToLower. Change the name of the transaction to Text to lower. Inside of the loop, modify the existing code to the following: 21. Build the macro, switch over to Revit and run the macro. The text now changes to all lower case. Page 10 of 29

11 Here is the code in its entirety: Round 1 - Next Steps Both code and node handled this task with relative ease. We can easily expand this automation to do a lot more. Here are some ideas: Change the text only in the current view Change text in multiple RVT files Change room names, sheet names, etc... So who do you think won round 1? Which one would be easier for you to create? Which one would be easier to have others in your office use? Which one would be easier to modify? Page 11 of 29

12 Round 2 On to the next challenge! In round 2, we re going to automate creating 20 sheets using data from an Excel file. It s easy to create sheets in Revit but wouldn t it be better if you could simply outline your sheet index in Excel then have Revit automatically create the sheets, update the sheet names and numbers then add a views? Both the Dynamo graph and Revit macro are going to use the following steps: Read Excel data and get sheet numbers, sheet names, and views Remove the Excel header data Create a new sheet Update the sheet s parameters using Excel data Add view to sheet Here s the Excel data we re going to use: Let s see how we do this in Dynamo and as a Revit macro Page 12 of 29

13 Round 2 Dynamo Dynamo makes working with Excel very easy. There are nodes that easily read and write data to Excel. Here is an image of the finished graph: To make the graph easier to understand, I ve grouped the nodes based on their specific task. Let s look at each group in detail: Page 13 of 29

We also remove the header row, from the list. We have a list of views from the Excel file.

14 In the first group of nodes, we specify the Excel file and connect it to the Excel.ReadFromFile node. Now that we have the data, we need to format and separate out the individual columns into separate lists. We also remove the header row, from the list. We have a list of views from the Excel file. This is just a list of view names. We need to get the actual view objects from the Revit model. To do this, we re going to get all the Page 14 of 29

Now that we have the sheet numbers, names, and view in their own lists, we re going to create the sheets using the Sheets.

15 ViewPlans from the model then compare this list with our list from Excel. We re going to use the results of this comparison to filter the ViewPlan list. Now that we have the sheet numbers, names, and view in their own lists, we re going to create the sheets using the Sheets.ByNameNumberTitleblockAndView. We re going to use the FamilyTYpes node to select the titleblock family. Connect all these nodes as shown below to create the sheets. Switch over to Revit to see the new sheets. Page 15 of 29

16 Round 2 - Revit Macro The round 2 macro follows similar steps as the Dynamo graph. The only difference is that instead of reading an Excel file, we re going to read a CSV version of the Excel file. Macros can read Excel but it requires a lot more code than just reading a CSV file. Here is the code for creating sheets: Page 16 of 29

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18 Round 2 - Next Steps As you can see, this is a really useful tool. You re going to create sheets for nearly every project. Why not have Revit do all the work for you? Some ideas to expand this automation are: Add multiple views to sheets Specify location of view on sheet Use different title block for some sheet Update additional sheet instance parameters Round 3 The final round is a tough one. In this challenge, we re going to design and model a house automatically. Yes, a house. Here are the steps we re going to use to automate this process: Define corner points Create floor, walls, and roof Change roof slope Add windows and doors Let s see how code and node stack up on this task. Round 3 Dynamo Dynamo barely completes this challenge and the graph gets a lot more complicated. Creating the walls and floor was easy. Creating a roof is also possible though not perfect. Lastly, Dynamo could add the doors and window using a node from the Wombat package a feat that was not possible last year. Here is the graph in its completed state: Page 18 of 29

19 To make the graph easier to understand, I ve grouped the nodes based on their specific task. Let s look at each group in detail: Page 19 of 29

The first group defines the house s base geometry.

Once the lines have been defined, the walls can be created. The Wall.

A code block is used to define the wall height. The Floor.

20 The first group defines the house s base geometry. Four points are created then these points are used to create lines. Once the lines have been defined, the walls can be created. The Wall.ByCurveAndHeight node requires a curve (line) as well as the wall height, a level, and a wall type. The Levels and Wall Types are used to define their respective indputs. A code block is used to define the wall height. The Floor.ByOutlineTypeAndLevel node is used to create the floor. This node requires an outline as an input. The create the outline, the lines created in step 2 are joined using a series of Curve.Join nodes. Page 20 of 29

Inserting the doors and windows took some

The trick was calculating the midpoint of

21 Inserting the doors and windows took some work and the Wall.InsertDoororWindow node from the Wombat package. The trick was calculating the midpoint of each wall using the Curve.PointAtParameter node. Entering 0.5 as the parameter input yielded the midpoint. To get the windows at 3 required adding a 0,0,3 vector to the midpoint. Page 21 of 29

In prior versions of Dynamo, it was not possible to create a roof, even using custom Python nodes.

22 Creating the roof was somewhat easier. Dynamo version 1.3 added nodes to create footprint and extrusion roofs. In prior versions of Dynamo, it was not possible to create a roof, even using custom Python nodes. Here are the nodes used to create the roof: And lastly, here is a screenshot of the resulting house: Yes, it will keep out the rain but it s not going to win any design awards, is it? Page 22 of 29

23 Round 3 - Revit Macros Completing this challenge using code was much more successful. All of the steps were achieved. The macro requires a lot of code but it is logically structured. A function to get a level object by name is used to make the macro more modular. Here is the code: Continued on next page. Page 23 of 29

24 Continued on next page. Page 24 of 29

25 Continued on next page. Page 25 of 29

26 Below is a screenshot of the resulting house: Adjusting the point coordinates or roof slope values can result in some interesting designs, like the one shown in the image below: Page 26 of 29

Round 3 - Next Steps While this example isn t particularly realistic, it does illustrate some of the limitations of Dynamo, particularly when it comes to the availability and reliability of custom

27 Round 3 - Next Steps While this example isn t particularly realistic, it does illustrate some of the limitations of Dynamo, particularly when it comes to the availability and reliability of custom nodes. This challenge could easily be modified to do some of the following: Prompt the user to select the corner points. Incorporate multiple designs and let user decide which to use. Create a furniture, restroom, or apartment layout (rather than an ugly house) Conclusion Choosing the appropriate automation method depends on many factors. What is the nature of the task? Is it a well-defined problem with logical steps or is it fuzzy? Who s going to use the resulting tool? Just you or a few people on your project team? Or is it for your whole office? Likewise, what s the skill level of the people using the tool? Will they be able to open Dynamo, make some changes to the nodes and run the graph? Lastly, what are your own interests and abilities? Does the idea of learning to code scare you or excite you? To help you decide, here s a handy chart that highlights some of the strengths and weaknesses of both Dynamo and Revit macros. Page 27 of 29

28 So what do I recommend? Learn both! If you re just starting out with Revit automation, here s the learning path I recommend: 1. Download the Revit API help file 2. Start playing with Dynamo 3. Create graphs to automate your tasks 4. Learn how to create your own nodes 5. Translate a Dynamo graph into a macro 6. Create a user interface for your macro Page 28 of 29

29 Resources Want to learn more about Dynamo or Revit macros? Check out these resources for more information. Blogs ArchSmarter Boost Your Bim - The Dynamo Primer - Simply Complex - Online Forums AUGI - DynamoBIM - Books Autodesk Revit 2013 Customization with.net How-to by Don Rudder Online Courses Revit Macros - Learning Dynamo - Page 29 of 29

More Practical Dynamo: Practical Uses for Dynamo Within Revit

AS10613 & AS13937 More Practical Dynamo: Practical Uses for Dynamo Within Revit MARCELLO SGAMBELLURI, BIM DIRECTOR JOHN A. MARTIN & ASSOCIATES Learning Objectives Learn how to program using visual programming.