Copy family between documents via API

By Joe Ye

Transferring standards and elements via API is hot API request before Revit 2014. Revit 2014 exposed the exciting API, copy element between documents. This give us the ability to do a lot of interesting jobs.

Here is an sample to transfer family between documents. This command copy family to another opened document in the same Revit session. It copies all the types of the picked family instance’s family.

using System;    using System.Collections.Generic;    using System.Text;    using System.Windows.Forms;         using  Autodesk.Revit .DB;    using Autodesk.Revit.UI;    using Autodesk.Revit .ApplicationServices;    using Autodesk.Revit.Attributes ;    using Autodesk.Revit.UI.Selection;                [TransactionAttribute(TransactionMode.Manual)]    public class RevitCommand : IExternalCommand    {        public Result Execute(ExternalCommandData commandData,           ref string messages, ElementSet elements)        {               UIApplication app = commandData.Application;          Document doc = app.ActiveUIDocument.Document;               Selection sel = app.ActiveUIDocument.Selection;               Reference ref1 = sel.PickObject(ObjectType.Element,             "pick a family instance");               FamilyInstance inst = doc.GetElement(ref1) as FamilyInstance;          if(inst == null)          {            messages = "No family instance was picked";            return Result.Failed;          }               FamilySymbol sym = inst.Symbol;                Document targetDoc = null;          foreach (Document doc1 in app.Application.Documents)          {            if (doc.Title != doc1.Title)            {              targetDoc = doc1;              break;            }          }               IList ids = new List();          foreach (FamilySymbol symbol in sym.Family.Symbols)          {            ids.Add(symbol.Id);          }               Transaction targetTrans = new Transaction(targetDoc);          targetTrans.Start("copyFamily");               ElementTransformUtils.CopyElements(doc, ids, targetDoc, null,             new CopyPasteOptions());          targetTrans.Commit();               return Result.Succeeded ;        }    }