Autodesk Developer Blog

Innovate. Integrate. Automate

Product and Add-In Wizard Updates

—

by

Jeremy Tammik
in ,

Here are several interesting updates and other little news items that appeared recently.

Revit 2012 Update Release 2

A few days ago, I was very surprised to hear that some people neglect to update their Revit products when intermediate updates appear.
I find that incomprehensible.
I updated all three flavours myself yesterday with zero hassle.

Revit 2012 Update Release 1 was published back in June 2011 and also included a

slightly updated Revit SDK.

Revit 2012 Update Release 2 is now available and can be downloaded from the public Revit product pages:

Please refer to the links above to read the separate lists of all the platform and product enhancements for Architecture, MEP and Structure.

Besides that, here are the API Enhancements made in this update, which are obviously shared across all flavours, since the Revit API is identical for all:

  • Corrects the sheet size calculation when exporting to one sheet to DWFx.
  • Improves stability during Reload Latest/Sync to Central when the document is not allowed to be modified.
  • Retains schemas during Sync to Central and allows central file to remain correct.
  • Reduces file corruption introduced by extensible storage.

I highly recommend installing these updates.

Visual Studio Revit Add-in Wizard Update

A while back, I updated my Visual Studio Revit add-in wizards to

support the Revit 2012 API.
For the full description of these wizards, please refer to the previous posts:

Now another issue gradually emerged which prompted me to revisit them once again:

When creating little sample projects, I have so far always left the resulting assembly DLLs in the Visual Studio bin/debug directory where they are created, and specified the full path to that location in the add-in manifest Assembly tag.
For distributing projects, or moving them around, this is cumbersome, since the path always needs updating in the add-in manifest.
Since the add-in manifest has to be copied to the Revit add-ins folder anyway, there is a pretty obvious and much more robust solution:
simply copy the assembly DLL to the same location as the add-in manifest, and no path needs to be specified at all.

This led me to make appropriate changes to the C# add-in wizard for my own use.
Besides that, I also changed some of the file encodings:

  • Converted the source code files from UTF-8 to ANSI encoding.
  • Removed the DLL path from the add-in manifest Assembly tag.
  • Instead, copy the assembly DLL together with the add-in manifest to the Revit add-in directory, so no path specification is needed.

<!– begin modified

I only created the update for C# so far, I’m ashamed to say, since that is all I use. –>

To install, simply copy the desired zip file to the appropriate location in your local file system:

Which version of the wizard to use is actually a question of personal preference.
The

previous one avoids
the overhead of creating a copy of the add-in assembly DLL together with the add-in manifest in the Revit add-ins folder, and uses the original copy in its original build location instead, which is good.
On the other hand, it explicitly adds the full path of the build location to the add-in manifest, which makes it more of a hassle to move the add-in to a different location.
I would say that the new one is better if you plan to share the add-in with others, and the old one has a slight advantage for purely personal, one-time use.

Removing an Add-In Registered by the Wizard

This ties in neatly with an issue that was raised by bthatcher in the Autodesk Revit API discussion group on

removing an add-In registered
by the wizard:

Question: I have a project in the ‘…\Visual Studio 2010\Projects...’ directory and I have that path in the add-in file. But I’m getting an error about ‘…does not exist’. I have copied and pasted that path and DLL name into the add-in file, just like I always do, but for some reason it’s still looking for it in the wrong place.
I started the project from a template I downloaded.

Finally, I removed all add-ins from the add-in folder and uninstalled and reinstalled Revit.
I’m still getting the error “External Tools – Add-in Assembly Not Found”.
I created two projects with this template.
The included add-in file had both Command and Application placeholders.
So I’m getting four errors, a command and application error for each project.

Answer:

The only thing that can cause a Revit add-in to be loaded, or searched for to cause that message to appear, is an add-in manifest in one of the two locations checked by Revit, for all users or a specific user. These locations again depend on the OS, whether Vista or XP, so you end up with four possible locations to check. They are listed in the Revit SDK developer guide:

For Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2012

or

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2012

For Vista/Windows 7:

C:\Users\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2012

or

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2012ÿ

If you have deleted all files in those two directories, the error cannot appear.

If the add-in manifest was placed there by the Visual Studio Revit add-In wizard, then you can also simply open that project in Visual Studio and select Build > Clean Solution to remove it again.

Global Leadership Summit at the One Team Conference

Of less interest to developers, but all the more so to leaders and visionaries, the 2012 incarnation of the Autodesk One Team Conference is scheduled for March next year,

OTC 2012.
At that event, on Thursday, March 15 2012, we are hosting the first ever Global Leadership Summit where senior leaders of Autodesk partners will explore as a group how to develop higher-performance within their organizations.
The summit consists of three tracks focused on Marketing, Sales Management and Consulting.
Participants will be asked to select a track and attend the track for the entire day.
If you are interested, please take a brief survey to help identify the top challenges in each track early on:

Comments

8 responses to “Product and Add-In Wizard Updates”

  1. Constantin Gherasim Avatar
    Constantin Gherasim

    Hi Jeremy,
    It seems that Update 2 is available only if the English language is selected on the first step.
    Do you know if the Update 2 from the English page will work with the localised versions (French as the matter of fact) or we have to wait until localised version of Update 2 will be available ?
    Thanks in advance and have a great weekend,
    Constantin

    Reply
  2. Jeremy Tammik Avatar
    Jeremy Tammik

    Dear Constantin,
    The Revit UR is global and works for all languages.
    We are currently translating the Readme files and will publish them once they become available.
    We are also updating the localized Product Download Page on the Autodesk.com site, but the UR2 link on the page will be the same as the one used in the English page.
    Cheers, Jeremy.

    Reply
  3. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    While you might recommend installing Update 2, I’m less convinced.
    To date, the update is not installing the shared updated content as documented.
    I understand someone may be working on making those updated files available to us. Haven’t seen them as yet though, so I’m hoping I don’t really need them until they become available.

    Reply
  4. Gerry Huot Avatar
    Gerry Huot

    Richard,
    Revit 2012 Update Release 2 contains all the fixes, in product and content, that Revit 2012 Update Release 1 provided. This is done to allow you to install just UR2 on the release version. With that said, if you installed UR1 and only have English content installed, then you would not see any further content updates. Most of the content updates from UR1 to UR2 were around templates for European Countries.
    I hope this helps,
    Gerry Huot
    Revit Release Manager
    Autodesk

    Reply
  5. Aaron Avatar
    Aaron

    Jeremy,
    I just want to comment on what you mentioned regarding updates. You said: “A few days ago, I was very surprised to hear that some people neglect to update their Revit products when intermediate updates appear. I find that incomprehensible. I updated all three flavours myself yesterday with zero hassle.”
    I am happy you were able to update with zero hassle, but this does not hold true for most of us.
    I have spent the last three hours trying to get updated. First the Live update feature choked. It’s a joke to say the least. It spent 45 minutes and two reboots trying to verify my software and another 30 minutes trying to download the update before giving me an error.
    The Autodesk website is all but worthless as it would not give enough information to grab an update and go with it. I had to come to your blog to get the info I needed.
    My machine was built from an Autodesk Reseller and they installed the software we need. But Autodesks software requires the “original” install package, so I had to rebuild my machine because I don’t have their downloaded “quick install” software, I have the CD’s.
    This is extremely frustrating and really not worth the three-plus hours this has currently taken. No, it is not incomprehensible to not update, what is incomprehensible is the amount of hoops and hassles and time lost just to update.
    So, there’s my 2c vent.

    Reply
  6. Jeff Hanson, Sr. Subject Matter Expert, Autodesk Avatar
    Jeff Hanson, Sr. Subject Matter Expert, Autodesk

    Aaron,
    I am sorry you have had so much trouble installing the Update Release to your system. It is important for Autodesk to hear this kind of feedback so we understand how this affects your work. We have recently made change to the software update process of Revit. In the past the entire application needed to be re-installed to get an update. Now we have the update releases where this is not required. It appears from your story we still have some work to do to get this process smoother for our customers. Thank you for sharing your story. I will pass this along to the Revit team so we can continue to work on making the update process smoother.

    Reply
  7. Afshin Avatar
    Afshin

    Hi Jeremy,
    I wonder if there is any way to create a dockable
    window/panel in Revit using API as it is available in Navisworks 2012?
    Cheers,
    Afshin

    Reply
  8. Jeremy Tammik Avatar
    Jeremy Tammik

    Dear Afshin,
    I am sorry to say that the Revit API does not provide any functionality supporting this.
    All I can suggest is to use the .NET System.Windows.Forms libraries, which go beyond the Revit API. Their use is not explicitly supported by the Revit API, though, so you are on your own with that from my point of view.
    Also, I would suggest that you be very careful to design your Revit add-ins so that they integrate easily into the Revit user interface, without disrupting the look and feel or surprising the user. Therefore, if you decide to create your own type of dockable add-in form, I would take care to retain the look and feel of the existing standard Revit user interface.
    By the way, the Revit SDK sample PowerCircuit does demonstrate a simple use of a non-docking control bar.
    Cheers, Jeremy.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Gerry HuotCancel reply

Discover more from Autodesk Developer Blog

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading