Indigo Renderer Forum

We are an architectural firm. We use Revit which (in our opinion) is the future of archtiectural production software. Anyway, we can export to dwg and go though sketchup to get to indigo, but it would be great if we could get an exporter direct...

Well.. i guess you have to start writing it then
Every exporter has pretty much come from users of the particular program. If you don't find someone who has the skill and time to program it for you, then you are on your own.
There is no team working on exporters or something like that.

doh. sorry. I'm new to this, just discovered the program a couple days ago...

I'm quite sure I dont' have the skill to write it. Maybe I can find someone who does... Oh well, looks like I'm going through sketchup for now...

Maybe someone who is bored and knows how to program (and reads this thread) can help you out.

perhaps. I know there are several programmers over on the Revit forum too, maybe I can get them to help (by help i mean do it). They're a generous bunch generally and it could be worth it...

Yeah, that would be a good place to ask.

Unfortunately all architects don't have the skill to write some useful exporter or parts of programs we need.
So, in the most of the cases is very hard to develop: I'm an architect too, working in a studio and we need some tools that nobody can do...

Personally I use Blender to export in Indigo from a Revit/AutoCad file.

If you find someone in Revit forum able to write an exporter (can be only geometry and we use the material tool to apply) please let us know, I'll use for sure!

Thank you,
Ricky

Is there some kind of a scripting language available inside Revit? Something like Python for Blender or maxscript in 3ds Max?

Unfortunately, there is no scripting support in Revit, but there is a very powerful .net 2.0 API.

I've taken a quick look at the SDK and from what I've seen, an exporter is quite possible. I'll try to write a proof-of-concept exporter and notify you of results.

cool. thank you so much for looking at that!

Jukka,

were you ever able to look at this by chance? I am toying with learning the API, or at least the basics of it for several reasons. If you have anything started it could be helpful to me, if not that's cool I'm sure you're quite busy.

THanks,
steve

sfaust,

Yep, I've taken a good look, and encountered a bit of a problem, so I gave it up for a while and focused on other things.

Currently, I can read the geometry just fine, that's no real problem. Even the geometry of family references (doors, windows etc.) can be transformed from their object coordinates into world coordinates with no trouble, but there are serious problems with materials.

I can't find a way to tell which material is assigned to which face (been working with Revit 9.1, maybe there's been some improvement in .net API for Revit 2008). I've written some plugins for AutoCAD too, so I know that Autodesk has some serious shortcomings when it comes to .net APIs, but they're constantly improving them.

Actually, I can get the material that belongs to a face, but only the default material assigned through object styles (Settings --> Object styles), which is not very helpful.

One of these days I'll take a look at Revit 2008 and notify you of any progress.

Update:

Just downloaded and installed Revit 2008, took a look at the new API, and there seem to be a lot of new and exciting things in there. So, I'll give it another try in a next week or so

cool, thank you. Let me know how it goes and if I can help at all