Moving the Section View Location

Today, let's recap the Revit API discussion forum thread on moving the location of a section view raised by Danny Bentley, BIM Structural Technician at SOM in California, since Danny very kindly created a video and GitHub repo to demonstrate and share the solution, which will certainly be of use to others as well.

By the way, Danny also writes Bentley's Revit Dynamo & API blog on his personal exploration of the Revit API and Dynamo.

Why does it have a ch domain, Danny?

Anyway, here is the issue moving the location of a section view:

Question: I saw a great post on the The Building Coder on how to create a section view to be aligned with a wall.

I'm working on a project in which the wall angle will change and I need to rotate an existing section to match it.

Is it possible to set a curve similar to a wall? I can't seem to find any curve or location point on the section view in RevitLookup.

  LocationCurve locationCurve = wall.WallCurve;

  Transaction t = new Transaction( doc );
  t.Start( "Move Wall" );
  locationCurve.Curve = LinkedProfile;
  t.Commit();

Answer: Thank you for your query and appreciation.

First of all, out of habit, I repeat:

For your own comfort and security, all use of transactions should be encapsulated in a using statement.

The Building Coder defines an entire topic group on handling transactions and transaction groups.

I think you can indeed change the wall location curve in a manner similar to what you show.

However, the code you list above is guaranteed not to work.

Beginning of misunderstanding

Look:

In this line, you make a copy of the wall location curve:

  LocationCurve locationCurve = wall.WallCurve;

Then, you change something in the copy:

  locationCurve.Curve = LinkedProfile;

And then you expect the wall to change?

Good luck with that.

You might have better luck with

  wall.WallCurve = LinkedProfile;

You might also want to take a look at the ADN Xtra labs sample command Lab2_5_SelectAndMoveWallAndAddColumns.

It moves a wall using

  wall.Location.Move( v )

by a given vector v.

End of misunderstanding

Oh, no, re-reading your query, I see you are trying to modify the section view, not the wall location line.

No, the section view does not have a location line.

It is controlled differently. The Revit SDK sample DynamicModelUpdate shows how to dynamically update a section view to follow a window placed in the model. You can adapt that to follow a wall in a similar fashion.

Here is a quick rundown of the places to look in that sample step by step:

• Folder 2017.1/SDK/Samples/DynamicModelUpdate/CS
• Module SectionUpdater.cs
• Method public void Execute(UpdaterData data)
• Variables and method call:

FamilyInstance window = doc.GetElement( m_windowId ) as FamilyInstance;

ViewSection section = doc.GetElement( m_sectionId ) as ViewSection;

RejustSectionView( doc, window, section );

• Method implementation and action:

internal void RejustSectionView( Document doc,
  Element elem, ViewSection section )

ElementTransformUtils.RotateElement(doc, m_sectionElement.Id,
  axis, rotateAngle);

ElementTransformUtils.MoveElement(doc, m_sectionElement.Id,
  translationVec);

Response: Perfect! I forget the many awesome examples in the SDK. I really need to look through them instead of always using Google.

Answer: I think you need to use both SDK and Internet searches, and more besides, as described in how to research to find a Revit API solution.

Response: I just wanted to add my solution in case anyone else is looking to align section views and create aligned sections.

Here is a 30-second video on YouTube showing my add-in in action:

The source code is provided on GitHub, in dannysbentley Sections repo.

It sports four external commands:

• CommandUpdate
• CommandCreateStart
• CommandCreateEnd
• CommandCreatePerpendicular

It also creates a neat little external application presenting a custom ribbon panel to drive them.

Many thanks to Danny for sharing this solution!