Practical Notes on Impractical Things

I just learned that the two introductory images presented in the article on the Revit form creation API came from Zach Kron, whose blog Buildz ↗ presents lots of interesting ‘practical notes on making impractical things’ in Revit.

Here is a pointer to a completely different kind of practical note on another blog:

Disable Auto Setback in Framing Template

Several developers have been struggling with some of the hard-coded Revit behaviour. Miroslav Schonauer just pointed out that he and Sarah Capes found a solution for one specific problem on an Autodesk Consulting project, which is documented in this article on how to disable auto setback in a framing template ↗.

And to round off today’s potpourri ↗, here is another issue around the topic of form creation:

NewSweptBlend Failure

Question: I am trying to use the NewSweptBlend method, but it throws an exception saying “The attempted operation is not permitted in this type of family.” What can I do to solve this?

Answer: This indicates that swept blends are not supported in the category type of the family where you are attempting to create it.

If it is a 2D family type, you would get this exception, and maybe also on a few other types as well.

In your specific case, the code uses a Conceptual Mass template and tries to create a SweptBlend in it. If you want to work in a Conceptual Mass template, you must use the NewSweptBlendForm method instead. If you want to use NewSweptBlend, then use a non-mass template. Note the difference between a generic model and conceptual mass.