topic Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing) in Revit API Forum

Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

m.vallee — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 14:36:30 GMT

Hi,

In my plugin I want to replace some doors with another ones (family symbols differ).

I want to make the needed flippings (flipHand, flipFacing) in order to have the "new" door in the same orientations (same hand orientation, same facing orientation) than the previous one.

The trouble is the needed flippings to make depend on the way the "new door" family was modeled : left hand, left hand reverse, right hand, right hand reverse. Is there a way to know which modeling strategy was used ? I think I should use geometry... I am considering using bounding boxes to find the closest geometry after the replacement was made.

Has someone already tried to do the same kind of things ?

Thanks for your ideas.

Best regards.

Maxime

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

sonicer — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 15:32:18 GMT

First you need get all flip parameter of one type of doors. Select type of door with to replace and this door must have same in template orientantion .

then algorithm to change each one.

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

m.vallee — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 07:49:15 GMT

Sorry but I don't see what you mean.

My trouble is that if the new family was modeled with another swing type than the first one (left hand instead of right hand for instance), you cannot use hand and facing orientations to retrieve the previous ones, because they don't match.

Maxime

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

sonicer — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 08:27:24 GMT

you must create algorith that check current orientation door and then check template of door that with them you replace.

then you must change the correct orientation.

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

m.vallee — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 10:02:53 GMT

Ok, but how do you perform these checks ?

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

sonicer — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 10:20:58 GMT

please send me some type of door...

I dont know what country standard do you use.

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

BenoitE&A — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 10:29:29 GMT

Hey Maxime,

Check the parameters of the Door object's instance (not of the object itself). You must have a parameter named hand side (or Something like this) and another named Facing.

These are the 2 parameters you want to keep unchanged when you replace your doors.

Benoit

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

m.vallee — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 11:33:18 GMT

I want my program to be able to deal with all types of swing types (LH-RH-LHR-RHR)

Suppose you have a left hand door instance, with HandFlipped = False and FacingFlipped = False. You replace this instance with a right hand door instance with the UI (you change its family symbol). Now what you get is an instance with a different orientation, although you still have HandFlipped = False and FacingFlipped = False. The HandOrientation and FacingOrientation vectors of the instance are also the same.

My goal is to find how to reorient the instance like it was before.

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

BenoitE&A — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 12:35:53 GMT

Looks like all of this is a geometry problem...

So to me it depends how your previous door family was designed (unflipped) and how the new one is. If the previous door and the door by which you replace it are drawn the same way (left hand for example) then you don't need to flip the new one. In the other case you do.

You can make a script to check if the door is left hand or right hand before you replace each door.

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

m.vallee — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 12:40:48 GMT

I agree with you, but how do I recognize the swing type from the (new) family object ? There are no family parameters giving the info directly...

And I don't know how to process the geometry to do this...

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

jeremytammik — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 13:33:09 GMT

Dear Maxime,

Thank you for your query, and many thanks to Sonicer and Benoit for their good suggestions.

I agree that it depends on the family definition, and that you might be able to implement a script to determine some aspects.

However, even the script will have to make some assumprions, e.g., about where the family insertion point is defined within the family definition.

Is the door insertion point always in the same axis as the hinges?

Or in the door centre point?

It will probably help if you talk with some Revit library content creation experts first and determine whether there are any global rules for door families that you can always rely on.

Maybe you can also implement checking code to ensure that this is the case and all your rules and assumptions are indeed complied with.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Jeremy

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

m.vallee — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 09:52:04 GMT

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for your message and your warnings concerning the insertion point.

As I said earlier, I want my program to be able to replace one door with any kind of doors, so I don't want to make assumptions on the new door swing type (left hand, right hand, left hand reverse, right hand reverse).

So I tried to find the new door swing type with two different approaches :

with the bounding boxes : when replacing, I put the new door in the 4 possible positions and tried to find which one makes the bounding box center the nearest to the replaced door bounding box center. It works for finding the correct flip facing, but it doesn't allow to find the correct flip hand, because bounding boxes are almost equivalent

        public void SetOrientationMethod2(FamilyInstance fi, BoundingBoxXYZ old_bb, Document document)
        {
            bool fliphand = false;
            bool flipfacing = false;
                        
            BoundingBoxXYZ bb = fi.get_BoundingBox(null);
            XYZ old_center = (old_bb.Max + old_bb.Min) / 2.0;

            double dist = ((bb.Max + bb.Min) / 2.0).DistanceTo(old_center);
            double dist_tmp;

            fi.flipHand();
            document.Regenerate();

            bb = fi.get_BoundingBox(null);
            dist_tmp = ((bb.Max + bb.Min) / 2.0).DistanceTo(old_center);
            if (dist_tmp < dist)
            {
                dist = dist_tmp;
                fliphand = true;
            }

            fi.flipFacing();
            document.Regenerate();

            bb = fi.get_BoundingBox(null);
            dist_tmp = ((bb.Max + bb.Min) / 2.0).DistanceTo(old_center);
            if (dist_tmp < dist)
            {
                dist = dist_tmp;
                flipfacing = true;
            }

            fi.flipHand();
            document.Regenerate();

            bb = fi.get_BoundingBox(null);
            dist_tmp = ((bb.Max + bb.Min) / 2.0).DistanceTo(old_center);
            if (dist_tmp < dist)
            {
                dist = dist_tmp;
                fliphand = false;
            }

            fi.flipFacing();
            document.Regenerate();


            // apply flips if needed
            if (fliphand && fi.CanFlipHand)
                fi.flipHand();

            if (flipfacing && fi.CanFlipFacing)
                fi.flipFacing();

        }

with the computed solids : when replacing, I put the new door in the 4 possible positions and, using the BooleanOperationUtils, tried to find which one makes the intersection between the replaced door and the new door the biggest in volume.

public void SetOrientationMethod3(FamilyInstance fi, Solid old_solid, Document document, Options opt)
        {
            bool fliphand = false;
            bool flipfacing = false;
            double vol_tmp;
            double vol;
                        
            Solid s = GetTotalSolid(fi, opt);
            Solid inter = BooleanOperationsUtils.ExecuteBooleanOperation(old_solid, s, BooleanOperationsType.Intersect);
            vol = inter.Volume;

            fi.flipHand();
            document.Regenerate();

            s = GetTotalSolid(fi, opt);
            inter = BooleanOperationsUtils.ExecuteBooleanOperation(old_solid, s, BooleanOperationsType.Intersect);
            vol_tmp = inter.Volume;
            if (vol_tmp > vol)
            {
                vol = vol_tmp;
                fliphand = true;
            }

            fi.flipFacing();
            document.Regenerate();

            s = GetTotalSolid(fi, opt);
            inter = BooleanOperationsUtils.ExecuteBooleanOperation(old_solid, s, BooleanOperationsType.Intersect);
            vol_tmp = inter.Volume;
            if (vol_tmp > vol)
            {
                vol = vol_tmp;
                flipfacing = true;
            }

            fi.flipHand();
            document.Regenerate();

            s = GetTotalSolid(fi, opt);
            inter = BooleanOperationsUtils.ExecuteBooleanOperation(old_solid, s, BooleanOperationsType.Intersect);
            vol_tmp = inter.Volume;
            if (vol_tmp > vol)
            {
                vol = vol_tmp;
                fliphand = false;
            }

            fi.flipFacing();
            document.Regenerate();
            
            // apply flips if needed
            if (fliphand && fi.CanFlipHand)
                fi.flipHand();

            if (flipfacing && fi.CanFlipFacing)
                fi.flipFacing();

        }

This method doesn't work either, I always get the following message when I make the boolean operations :

Failed to perform the Boolean operation for the two solids. This may be due to geometric inaccuracies in the solids, such as slightly misaligned faces or edges. If so, eliminating the inaccuracies by making sure the solids are accurately aligned may solve the problem. This also may be due to one or both solids having complexities such as more than two faces geometrically meeting along a single edge, or two coincident edges, etc. Eliminating such conditions, or performing a sequence of Boolean operations in an order that avoids such conditions, may solve the problem.

This also happens when trying to compute the differences.

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

jeremytammik — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 15:44:31 GMT

Dear Maxime,

Thank you for the update and sharing your very interesting approaches.

I think I like the last one best.

I also think it might be possible to tweak it to avoid the problems you describe.

My idea is to grab the geometry, just like you are doing now, and to tweak it while retrieving it to match a pre-defined grid of points.

For instance, when I grab geometry for further processing, I often round every point to the closest millimetre.

In this specific case, it might be better to use a larger value still, e.g. 10 mm, or even 50 mm.

In that case, it might be hard to create a new solid based on the points you receive.

You could do something else, though, that might be more efficient:

Define a door vertex metric.

Retrieve all the vertices from the door solid, as described for the Structural Concrete Setout Point Add-in:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2012/08/structural-concrete-setout-point-add-in.html#3

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2014/11/concrete-setout-points-for-revit-structure-2015.html

I think that you can probably determine the swing and facing values better from the points than from the solids.

You might even be able to define a pretty accurate door comparison metric just based on the vertices.

Here are some more thoughts on defining a metric to create your own database lookup key or comparison method:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2012/03/great-ocean-road-and-creating-your-own-key.html#2

What do you think?

Cheers,

Jeremy

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

FAIR59 — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 09:27:53 GMT

In my experience, the door swing is a Line and not a solid. Do you know in advance that the door swing is a solid?

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

m.vallee — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 09:29:26 GMT

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for the idea.

I had a try with your SetOutPoints application on concrete elements, and I could certainly adapt it to get the doors "main" points.

However, I don't see how I would use these vertices to compare doors and determine the swing and facing values...

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

Revitalizer — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 09:50:18 GMT

Hi,

your topic seems to be related to this one:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-api-forum/place-a-door-tag-at-the-center-of-the-hosting-door-swing-curve/m-p/7264654/highlight/true#M24304

I may cite myself:

"[...] there is a static method ExporterIFCUtils.GetDoor2DArcsFromFamily which returns a List of Arcs.

[...]

In fact, I wonder why the argument is a Family instead of a FamilyInstance. Seems that you have to transform the result to get your Arcs in project coordinates."

Revitalizer

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

jeremytammik — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 09:53:20 GMT

Hi Frank @FAIR59,

Yes. One could adapt the vertex collection algorithm to collect vertices from arcs and lines as well.

One could also expend it to store the entire arc and line information for deeper analysis and classification.

Hi Maxime @m.vallee,

You would have to expand the data collected and the comparison algorithm using it to find a way to determine exactly the information you require.

This sounds like fun to me.

Good luck!

Cheers,

Jeremy

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

m.vallee — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 10:23:50 GMT

Hi @Revitalizer,

Thank you for your help, it drove me to a quite nice solution.

The ExporterIFCUtils.GetDoor2DArcsFromFamily method returns the list of the arcs shown in the 2D view of the door revit family in edition mode. So it is exactly what I was looking for to determine the door swing type of the family.

Maxime

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

m.vallee — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 15:15:39 GMT

I just found that the static method ExporterIFCUtils.GetDoor2DArcsFromFamily doesn't get the door swing arc if it belongs to a nested family of the door... no matter if the nested family is shared or not. So the arc representing the door swing needs to be in the door family to be retrieved...

Re: Replacing doors and doors orientations (flip hand, flip facing)

jeremytammik — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 17:23:59 GMT

<joke>Create a screen snapshot bitmap image of the door family instance and its surrounding and teach a machine learning algorithm to extract the information you require.</joke>

Cheers,

Jeremy