Accessing model information without needing to open Revit

[travis.rothbloom]

Hi,

I’m trying to create a console application that can read data from a Revit model without having to open Revit. Compiling the code works just fine, but when I try to run it, I get a System.BadImageFormatException saying that the RevitAPI.dll module or one of its dependencies couldn’t be found. Might this be because I’m creating this as a console application rather than the standard class library we use for addins?

Here’s the code I’m using as reference:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

using Autodesk.Revit.UI;
using Autodesk.Revit.DB;

namespace extractFromClosedRevitFile
{
    class Program
    {
        [STAThread]
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Autodesk.Revit.ApplicationServices.Application revitApp =
                new Autodesk.Revit.ApplicationServices.Application();
            OpenFileDialog ofd = new OpenFileDialog();
            if (ofd.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.Cancel)
            {
                return;
            }

            Document doc = revitApp.OpenDocumentFile(ofd.FileName);
            Console.WriteLine(doc.Title);
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

Thanks,
Travis

[arnostlobel · Accepted solution]

I am sorry, Travis, you cannot do what you want to do. You cannot instantiate a Revit Application. It is an application singleton and is instantiated by a Revit initialization procedure during Revit start-up. In other words – in order for you to use the Revit API, Revit must be launched and running.

[travis.rothbloom]

Thanks for responding so quickly Arnošt, it's unfortunate that this isn't possible but I understand.