LearnRevitAPI

May 19, 2024

Revit API Resources

Revit API is very niche. But there are still plenty of places with examples and tutorials. And I want to share with you the best ones.

Some of these resources are very common, but there are a few that I didn't know about for years. So Enjoy this!

Also feel free to reply with more Revit API Resources.

💡Watch this video to find Revit API Resources you didn't know
or read extended blog post here.

Documentation

Let's start with a few documentation website.

I know it sounds boring, but without documentation there wouldn't be any programmers. So these are quite important resources.

E-Books

If you want a roadmap to Learn Revit API, then I want to suggest you my free E-Book: The Beginner's Guide to Revit API or an older e-Book about FilteredElementCollectors and Filters

The Beginner's Guide to RevitAPI

Get a roadmap to LearnRevitAPI with a lot of examples, explanations and links to other resources.

Master Getting Elements with FEC and Filters

Learn how to use FEC and filters to get your elements. Getting the right elements is half the solution!

pyRevit Extensions

pyRevit is FREE and Open-Source, which is mind blowing!

It means we can access every single line of code written. And not just pyRevit itself, but every single tool in pyRevit and all additional extensions including EF-Tools, pyRevitMEP, pyApex and many others...

Install a bunch of extensions and then explore the code.

👉 ALT + CLICK on any tool and it will open the source folder.

GitHub - pyRevit Extensions

You can also explore all the code from pyRevit extensions online. Here are the most popular extensions:

GitHub: pyRevit

Also, if you want to have even more examples, I highly encourage you to search 'pyRevit' on GitHub like this: GitHub/Search/pyRevit

This will show you 231 repositories where you can find samples.

GitHub: Revit API

You can also search for 'Revit API' term to find even more examples.
GitHub/Search/Revit API

But keep in mind that there will be lots of C# Samples too.

Pro Tip

Did you know that you can change github.com... to github.dev...

This will the git repository inside of a Web version of VS Code. It will be more comfortable to explore the code in a web IDE .

Revit API SDK

You should also have a look at Revit API SDK (Software development Kit).

Unfortunately it's made for C# code, but you can still translate it to python with ChatGPT.

Learn Revit API - Python Snippets

If you want to see more Revit API snippets in python, have a look at my library of python snippets. There are lots of snippets, and I try to keep adding more.

Search Code by Classes

Sometimes, an example wouldn't hurt when you encounter a new class. Obviously, we tend to look in Google and YouTube, but sometimes there is nothing.

So, I would suggest to use these resources to scan code on the GitHub to see, if there are any examples:

AI Tools

Our lives have certainly changed since LLM(Large-Language-Models) became a mainstream thing, so we should definitely adapt using them more.

There are lots of models out there, and it's hard to stay up to date which one is the best. But there is a very cool resource where you can compare different models:
ChatBot Arena(https://chat.lmsys.org/)

It's a place where you can test multiple models for free and compare their results. You can even choose random models and see their names after you rate which one is better.

Coding Pair

There are also AI helpers that were made for IDE. This means you don't have to leave your code environment to ask questions or even ask to write some code and help you refactor it.

There are many options as well, I will just list here the most popular ones, and later I will make a separate video about them

Blogs

I think should mention some blogs as well.

thebuildingcoder Blog - The OG blog by Jeremy Tammik.

Learn Revit API Blog - My Blog. I had some users reach out and thank me that I saved them days of work thanks to certain articles.

Video Resources:

Lastly, I want to mention a few video resources for Revit API.

YouTube: Revit API - Search for Revit API in YouTube and find a lot of different videos from multiple channels. Sometimes you can try searching for your specific problem and if you are lucky enough, it can save you days!

Autodesk University: Revit API - Also, make sure you check previous recordings on Autodesk university. I remember when I started I've found a bunch of presentations there that helped me get started.