Any new on Revit 2009 API?

[scowsert]

Is there any news on the Revit 2009 API?

[GuyR]

I don't think they've released us from the NDA for the sdk yet. Those of us with ADN membership have been using it for the last 2 months.

I don't think I'm breaching anything by saying this is by a large margin the most significant release ever for the Revit API . The API team have made stellar improvements in some important areas.

Cheers,

Guy

[Apsis0215]

A little poking around on the net and if there is any credence to it- they should *hopefully have more (Please say TOTAL) exposure of the objects accessible VIA the front end user interface. And it looks like the back-end VSTA is coming...

VSTA is the acronym for Visual Studio Tools for Applications and is the replacement technology from Microsoft for VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). VSTA is a .NET development environment built into Revit (and other Autodesk applications) and can be used to create both VB.NET and C# based macros. While I called this a "light" programming environment that is not to say this is for beginners as you will need to have some programming skills to take advantage of this feature...
--SNIP--

[r.howarth]

http://cadappdev.blogspot.com/

a flood of posts by matt just came out on it :D

I dont have the SDK but we got the revgit structure 2009 beta here in the office so I opened up the revit API.dll file and had a flick through the classes - the file is almost doubled in size ;)

[GuyR]

A little poking around on the net and if there is any credence to it- they should *hopefully have more (Please say TOTAL) exposure of the objects accessible VIA the front end user interface. And it looks like the back-end VSTA is coming...--SNIP--

Revit objects exposed within VSTA are no different than using the standard API. In fact it's worse because filters aren't available, which is a massive disadvantage. Plus you can't create toolbars or buttons, assign keyboard shortcuts or record. So in general think of VSTA as a first step towards the ultimate goal. It's of fairly limited use in it's current implementation. It's biggest advantage is the ability to embed a command in the project file.

In terms of new functionality my top 3 are:
1.. Speed!!!!!!!
2.. Speed!!!!!!!
3.. Speed!!!!!!!

Exceptional improvements in speed in real world projects. If this was the one thing they did for the API in 2009 it would have almost been enough. It's a game changer in so many ways.

Guy