Following Udemy tutorial: ThisDocument does not contian a definition for 'ActiveUIDocument'...

[polylop]

I'm currently viewing tutorials for the RevitAPI by udemy, currently on the second video i.e. "Prompt user to select an element, get element info".

When I build the code however, which I just followed from the tutorial, I get the error in the title, like it's saying that it can't find ActiveUIDocument or something.

namespace promptuser
{
    [Autodesk.Revit.Attributes.Transaction(Autodesk.Revit.Attributes.TransactionMode.Manual)]
    [Autodesk.Revit.DB.Macros.AddInId("4C3F6AF8-A7AF-4E43-9D90-2DE1A9DB7BA3")]
	public partial class ThisDocument
	{
		public void selectElement()
		{
			// info about how the revit user interacts with the file
			// icludes info about view windows and selection of elements in those windows
			// then we get the activeUiDocument use the ff syntax
			UIDocument uidoc = this.ActiveUIDocument;
			
			// Database doc = stores info about walls, floors, parameters, etc.
			Document doc = uidoc.Document;
			
			// prompt the user to select an object
			// Namespace: Autodesk.Revit.UI.Selection
			// this would have been the code = uidoc.Selection.PickObject(ObjectType.Element);
			
			// but since this returns a Reference object, store that in a variable
			Reference myRef = uidoc.Selection.PickObject(ObjectType.Element);
			
			// get the element itself
			Element e = doc.GetElement(myRef);
			
			// display its name, and ID
			TaskDialog.Show(e.Name + Environment.NewLine + e.Id);
		}
		
		public void SimpleDialog()
		{
			TaskDialog.Show("This is a title", "Hello Revit WOrld");
		}
		
		
	}
}

I have no idea why this is happening.

[polylop]

Nevermind, just discovered the problem, just checked the RevitAPI chm, apparently ActiveUIDocument is a property of UIApplication which in turn is part of the Autodesk.Revit.UI namespace.

The solution would simply be

UIApplication uiapp = this.Application;
UIDocument uidoc = uiapp.ActiveUIDocument;

What's weird though is that the tutorial worked despite the lack of the code above. What could be the reason for this?

[willw663499]

The original udemy tutorial is for an application macro. It does not need to access the application.

[sdarali]

The original udemy tutorial is for an application macro. It does not need to access the application.

That is correct. Accessing the active document from an application macro is through referencing the application first and then grabbing the active document from it, while accessing the active document from a document macro is direct because the macro would be running from within the active document itself.