Three topics for today:
I returned from the Hackathon Open Data Brussels that I mentioned last Friday, promoting the use of the huge amounts of open data, cf. this impressive list of available data sets.
As said, I participated in the PoiPointer project, with a goal of implementing an app pointing out points of interest of various categories in Brussels, e.g. museums, cultural places, monuments, sculptures, fountains, murals, etc.
We used the schema-less REST driven JSON-based ElasticSearch database and Java for the back end database, node.js and JavaScript for the web server, Objective-C for the iOS mobile app, Python for database clean-up and verification and HTML with GitHub in-place website hosting for the project home page.
Here is the project home page and all its GitHub repositories:I learned lots of new things and will definitely take a closer look soon at implementing some simple cloud-connected database search engine connected with Revit BIM collection using node.js and ElasticSearch.
I love the GitHub web hosting functionality and will certainly make frequent continued use of that as well.
I received an email asking whether it might be possible to implement a perception of depth on elevation and section views:
Question: I am struggling to provide an automatic perception of depth on elevation and section views.
I would like the objects in the front to be displayed in black and white like Revit normally does. Everything in the background should be a grey of sorts, and the further back, the lighter the grey.
Here is an illustration of what I mean:
Here is a discussion on whether Revit elevation views are leaving you flat that might help provide a better explanation of the end result that I am looking to achieve.
I have no knowledge of the Revit API or add-in programming. Do you think that this is possible?
Can this be achieved using API or through an add-in?
Answer: You are in luck, especially since you say that you are not an experienced add-in programmer yourself.
I once happened to notice an add-in that does exactly what you are asking for.
It was published on an Italian blog, though.
I spent quite a while digging around for it and was initially still not able to find it or any way to pick it out from the mass.
Searching for "italian add-in" obviously did not help, and I could not imagine what it would.
Later...
I spent some more time on this and finally found a suitable search term: revit macro distanzia led to puntorevit.blogspot.com, and that in turn led to the mention I had in mind, on the view depth override macro by Paolo Emilio Serra.
I browsed through inpuntorevit a bit more and even discovered a recent update of the view depth override external command for Revit 2015.
By the way, Paolo switched from Italian to English language blogging now, which may or may not simplify things for you, depending on your language preferences :-)
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