Where do I start?

[sfaust]

Ok, so I am quite experienced with Revit (+/- 6 years) but I am VERY inexperienced with programming (read: essentially no experience) but I usually pick up on computer stuff pretty quickly. Anyway, I would like to be able to use the API to do at least some basic things and make some little tools on my own.

So my question to those of you who are good at this is: where should I start? I don't really want to do a lot of fancy stuff, just basics. What language should I look at? Where is a good place to learn? Any other suggestions for me?

Thanks,
Steve

[Steve_Stafford]

I'm sure that Guy or Danny would be better suited for a reply but if I were in your shoes I'd probably focus on learning C# (CeeSharp) as it was developed for .net if I have my facts straight. From what little I've read C# is supposed to have a number of advantages over the other choices because it is a newer language. Revit is developed in C++. You can technically write code in any number of development languages as long as they are .net versions.

Another possible candidate would be Visual Basic. I did some hacking, wouldn't call it real programming, a few years back using Visual Basic and I was able to figure out how to do what I wanted but I wouldn't call it easy either. Learning to use programming languages is a whole discipline/career unto itself, you'd do well to pick up some books on the basic concepts of programming and then pick a language to focus on. I enjoyed a book called Code Complete which is an insiders look at the world of programming and how things go wrong and best practices etc.

There are also quite a large number of examples you can examine on the Revit CD. I don't recall which language they are in...VB? help...Guy? Danny? I seem to recall a similar thread sometime in the past here.

You'll probably inevitably start with the traditional "Hello World" routine

[clog boy]

Microsoft has some free developer stuff, Visual Studio Basic or something, in which you can build windows (read: drag around with buttons etc). The tricky part is to write some code (functions) to make the buttons do what you want.
Do you have webdesign experience? I think building forms and make them interact with Javascript, getting yourself familiar with the Document Object Model and basic JS functions, are a good crash course. I might be wrong ofcourse, since I gave up programming after the first few basic tutorials. (am learning JS now tho)
I'm told Visual Basic and C# are very similar to writing macros for Word and Excel.
To be honest, I don't even know how to make an API work with Revit, which is supposed to be the easy part.

Good luck and have fun. I'll keep an eye on this thread.

[LRaiz]

Unless you want to change your profession then save your time and stick to architecture. I think it is silly to expect that a non-professional programmer might be able to develop anything significant in for an application as complicated as Revit.

[dpasa]

Correct LRaiz, I did some very nice things with AutoLisp but this is completely different, I was using Turbo Pascal in the past, a much better and easier prog. language than VB and C#. Then it changed to Delphi, very powerful but I had to learn programming in Windows... Sorry, I am not a programmer... I guess everything goes too fast now for amateurs.

[Brian Myers]

Not to lead this thread off-track, but since it seems that the general thought is to "not do this at home" are there any good resources you would recommend for this customized app content? Not programming, but a resource to either download or purchase existing API applications/tools for Revit?