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So many exciting things going on, personally, globally, technically and politically:
I am somewhat in turmoil. My daughter is imminently expecting a baby. My brother is imminently dying. The entire world seems to be in upheaval, politically, technologically, in polarisation between continents and socially. I’m fine myself, physically.
The largest global upheaval that I see looming is the projection by the 1972 study on the limits to growth that I pointed out in January.
One sliver of hope on possibly handling the collapse that it predicts in the coming decades is offered by Sam Altman's Three Observations on the rapid and accelerating AI evolution we are observing, providing an exciting optimistic outlook into the near future. He compares the development of AI with Moore's law, which notes that computing power increased exponentially by a factor of 2 every 18 months. In AI development, Altman notes that the cost to use a given level of AI falls about 10x every 12 months, and lower prices lead to much more use, cf., Jevons Paradox. He concludes:
Anyone in 2035 should be able to marshal the intellectual capacity equivalent to everyone in 2025; everyone should have access to unlimited genius to direct however they can imagine. There is a great deal of talent right now without the resources to fully express itself, and if we change that, the resulting creative output of the world will lead to tremendous benefits for us all.
Let's hope that comes true.
Today, only 199 human programmers are better than o3, and r1 can produce the best kernel code, cf.,
reasoning models are near-superhuman coders:
A number of developers reacted to an initial post saying I'm in my 50's and I just had ChatGPT write me a javascript/html calculator for my website. I'm shook..
Exciting times indeed, with huge changes ahead.
I will be retiring before those calamities arrive.
We are recruiting a replacement for me. The replacement should be based in Europe. Here is the public job posting for a Senior Developer Advocate Engineer.
If you are interested in this opportunity, I suggest you do not apply directly through the link above. Instead, send me a message to my Autodesk email address and let me know your contact details. Then, I can submit a referral for you, and the recruiters will contact you directly.
Good luck!
I just discovered a new online version of the Revit API documentation, Rev API docs – revapidocs.com.
It was created by the Revit API consulting company Nonica.io. It includes coverage for the Revit 2025 API, which was (and still is) lacking in revitapidocs.com.
I like it. It is free of advertising. It is fast. It has good search functionality with immediate feedback.
Many thanks to Nonica.io for creating and sharing this resource.
I discussed the ricaun.RevitTest unit testing framework with Luiz Henrique @ricaun Cassettari to clarify some aspects; he says:
When I started researching about unit tests inside Revit, I had a hard time setting up the DynamoDS/RevitTestFramework inside my Revit; the project looks abandoned, and the last updates are six years old.
In the end, I started using the geberit/Revit.TestRunner version that was a little easier to install. I submitted PRs to fix some issues, and the project is alive on GitHub and supports more recent versions of Revit.
When I started using/playing with the Autodesk Platform Services APS Design Automation API for Revit, DA4R, I also wanted to be able to use DA4R to run tests use inside a GitHub Action.
That was the main goal: run tests using both Revit for Desktop and Revit for Design Automation.
Plus, I found a way to use the default Test Explorer inside Visual Studio to run tests inside Revit.
No need to manually install the plugin in the machine:
the ricaun.RevitTest.TestAdapter does the work to install the plugin in the machine, find Revit folder based on the Revit installation, open Revit, run the tests, show the results inside Visual Studio and close Revit.
It is easy and convenient; you can download the sample project and just run the tests directly inside Visual Studio.
Furthermore, knowing that the Revit 2025 API was based on .NET Core, I designed the whole project with that in mind.
Supporting Revit versions from 2019 to 2025, and also, yes, ricaun.RevitTest works with the Revit Preview.
For running tests in DA4R, I still need to share the main project, ricaun-io/ricaun.DA4R.NUnit.
I have a class session coming up at Autodesk DevCon Europe this year, taking place on May 20–21 2025 in Amsterdam; that's gonna be fun:
In the class, "Multi-Version RevitTest Framework: Unit Testing Revit API using Design Automation." you'll learn the intricacies of executing unit tests for Revit add-ins both locally and remotely. Using the versatile RevitTest Framework, you'll discover how to create consistent and reliable unit tests that can be run on your local machine as well as through Design Automation for Revit. Elevate your unit testing practices with Revit API by joining us and unlock the potential of running tests for multiple Revit versions using a unique and unified RevitTest Framework.
The ricaun.RevitTest features include:
Have a great week!
Many thanks to ricaun for the very helpful and detailed in-depth explanation!
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Andrea @andrea.tassera Tassera shared a new insight on
the Revit 2024 Other parameter group:
Apparently, using
new ForgeTypeId(string.Empty)only works for Revit 2024 and above. I was just testing what's on this post in my code, and it was working with Revit 2025, but not in Revit 2023. The
ForgeTypeIdchange seems to be applied from Revit 2021 onwards, so I thought it was strange that it wasn't working in 2023. I did some experimentation and if you usenullinstead ofnew ForgeTypeId(string.Empty), then it works in all versions of Revit. Thought you guys might be interested :-)
Thank you, Andrea, for sharing this.
Eason Kang published two blog posts about exporting IFC using DA4R, the Autodesk Platform Services APS Design Automation for Revit API:
People regularly ponder driving Revit from outside, and now this question came up again, how to use Revit API from a web app:
Question: Is it possible to create a web app that manipulates a simple object in Revit "Beam for example".
Answer: The pure Revit API is a Windows .NET API that requires a running session of Revit and a valid Revit API context to execute, which is only provided within a running session of Revit.exe on a Windows desktop PC. You can however also use the Revit API in the cloud on a virtual machine directly from a web app by making use of the Autodesk Platform Services APS Design Automation for Revit API.
Chuong Ho adds another idea to play with:
Chuong also points out this tutorial for getting started with the Autodesk Platform Services APS Design Automation API for Revit, DA4R, to update a Revit Model in ACC, the Autodesk Construction Cloud:
Thank you for the pointers, Chuong!
Back to AI-related topics, a report on the impact of generative AI on critical thinking: self-reported reductions in cognitive effort and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers:
The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) in knowledge workflows raises questions about its impact on critical thinking skills and practices. We survey 319 knowledge workers to investigate 1) when and how they perceive the enaction of critical thinking when using GenAI, and 2) when and why GenAI affects their effort to do so. Participants shared 936 first-hand examples of using GenAI in work tasks. Quantitatively, when considering both task- and user-specific factors, a user’s task-specific self-confidence and confidence in GenAI are predictive of whether critical thinking is enacted and the effort of doing so in GenAI-assisted tasks. Specifically, higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking. Qualitatively, GenAI shifts the nature of critical thinking toward information verification, response integration, and task stewardship. Our insights reveal new design challenges and opportunities for developing GenAI tools for knowledge work.
As we seem to be nearing AGI, it is interesting to look at more challenging tests that the current LLMs cannot yet handle:
Do you work with Python? If so, the following tool may be of interest: uv, an extremely fast Python package and project manager sporting the following impressive features:
If you like how blazingly fast it is, you might be interested in learning the smart engineering behind it (40 minute video). It also enables some interesting ways to run scripts, cf., some tricks with UV and a new Python project: uvtrick.