Accessing Revit Data Without open revit

[Anonymous]

How can i access Revit Information without open revit application such as the existing application which is content studio.

we would like to explore more on parameters without open the application. I know this kind of thread has been created few times but I manage to found that Content studio can do the same. anyone know how to deal with this?

Thank you very very much if anyone could help on this.

[jeremytammik]

Dear Jasonkhc,

Thank you for your query.

I assume you are referring to the Revit Content Studio by http://contentstudioltd.com?

Just as you already noted, this question has been discussed repeatedly in the past, both here in the discussion forum and by The Building Coder.

The latest discussion thread and blog post on this topic were raised and published just last month:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-api/revit-api-code-without-user-interaction-in-application/m-p/5...

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2016/02/reading-an-rvt-file-without-revit.html

In general, as noted in both those places, it is not possible to access Revit data or make any use whatsoever of the Revit API from outside of Revit.

Moreover, you need to be in a valid Revit API context to make any Revit API calls.

A valid Revit API context is only available within call back functions, i.e. event handlers that are actively called by Revit after registering to the corresponding API events.

This is described in detail in numerous discussions in The Building Coder topic group on Idling and External Events for Modeless Access and Driving Revit from Outside:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/about-the-author.html#5.28

I assume that the information provided by Content Studio is accessible through the OLE and COM Structured Storage of the RVT and RFA file formats and the part atom functionality and the Application ExtractPartAtomFromFamilyFile method provided by the Revit API and described in the posts listed above.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Jeremy

[jeremytammik]

I added a summary of this thread to the existing discussion on The Building Coder:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2016/02/reading-an-rvt-file-without-revit.html