Lately, I have been sharing a few concepts of add-ins that I have been working on at Parallax Team.

I wanted to take a moment and outline this journey a bit. I would have to say that my interest in the Revit API started a while back when I began learning Dynamo in 2014. After working in Dynamo for a while, I began hacking at Python with some amazing guidance from people like Andreas (clockwork) and Konrad (archilab). Shortly after, I knew the next step was to learn ZeroTouch and started looking at that. Luckily, a good friend offered a helping hand. Marcello showed me the way and I started making a ton of nodes. I previously discussed this bit of my journey in this post, http://sixtysecondrevit.com/2017-03-31-well-how-did-we-get-here/.

After coding ZeroTouch nodes for the past year for Rhythm, I have learned a ton. This, of course, made me wonder what was the next step for me. After being in the Revit API for a while I wanted to start making Revit add-ins. So I went ahead, fired up my old personal Dell Laptop and started coding. After a bit of trial and error, I managed to make a few cool things. The first was the in-place family warning.

The add-in was clunky at first and not Digitally Signed, so it got shelved for a bit. I went ahead and left it alone for awhile to get ready for AU2017.

Enter 2018. Now here we are, I am now at a company called Parallax and my job is mostly creating Dynamo workflows and programming. I began working out a lot of my app ideas. So far I have teased the following: The In-Place family warning,

a ribbon colorizer to warn you which location you are working in

and, a new one, a sync with central timer.

Additionally, all of these apps will be available soon, with more to come. This is primarily because Parallax sees a use for these things and wants to release them to help people save time to worry about better things. Also, the code is now Digitally Signed and official thanks to our shiny new code certificate. For more about code-signing refer to Konrad’s post here, http://archi-lab.net/code-signing-of-your-revit-plug-ins/.

Overall, this is an exciting time. People keep on thinking of clever little app ideas, and it is inspiring. The Sync With Central timer started out as a joke. I was messing around with Rhythm trying to color the Revit ribbon and eventually, it worked. I can honestly say, having fun and playing around with Dynamo has led to a great learning experience and ultimately a fairly useful Revit addin!

Have some fun! You might learn something. -johnP