Sunday, January 3, 2010

Streaming Grasshopper Points into a Revit Conceptual Mass

This will be the first of a series of posts where I will explore various strategies for moving geometric and analytical data between software platforms...

While often times sufficient, I have sometimes found the standard means of Importing/Exporting model information using file formats to be quite cumbersome and limiting
... especially in the case of Revit where it is next to impossible to modify or build from linked/imported files

Below is a basic example of streaming a list of XYZ coordinates from Grasshopper into a *csv file and then using that file to create reference points in a Revit conceptual mass... A custom script was written using the Revit API to read the CSV file and make the points.


Here is the Revit API code (in VB.NET) for reading the *.csv file :

Dim XYZfile As String = "insert file path here"

If File.Exists(XYZfile) Then

Dim FileReadXYZ As New StreamReader(XYZfile)

Do While FileReadXYZ.Peek <> -1
Dim XYZLine As String = FileReadXYZ.ReadLine()
Dim XYZData As String() = XYZLine.Split(",")
Dim XYZ As Autodesk.Revit.Geometry.XYZ
Dim RefPt As Autodesk.Revit.Elements.ReferencePoint

XYZ = revit_app.Create.NewXYZ(Convert.ToDouble(XYZData(0)), Convert.ToDouble(XYZData(1)), Convert.ToDouble(XYZData(2)))
RefPt = revit_doc.FamilyCreate.NewReferencePoint(XYZ)
Loop

End If