centerline

[revitworkbench]

Is there a way to pick the center line of a pipe or duct in the revit API? I am trying to think of a way to write a macro to align 2 "pipes" via their centerlines by simply clicking one, and then the other. I know you can do it using the align tool but its tedious to tab select the centerline, especially when there is insulation involve. Thanks in advance.

[Aaron.Lu]

Dear Mike Mead, We can align centerlines of pipes using API, here is how to do this:

- get the pipe elements

- retrieve center line geometry from the pipes, note: options's property IncludeNonVisibleObjects and ComputeReferences should be set to true. and the View should be set to the plan view, here I assume ActiveView is a plan view.

Options options = new Options();
options.ComputeReferences = true;
if (pipe.Document.ActiveView != null)
    options.View = pipe.Document.ActiveView;
else
    options.DetailLevel = ViewDetailLevel.Fine;
options.IncludeNonVisibleObjects = true;
var geoElem = pipe.get_Geometry(options);

- and get the centerline, which is Line

foreach (var item in geoElem)
{
    Line lineObj = item as Line;
    if (lineObj != null)
    {
        //
    }
}

- Move one pipe to align with the other, using ElementTransformUtils.MoveElement, this is a must

- Get reference from the geometry lines and Create the alignment constraint using RevitDoc.Create.NewAlignment method.

[revitworkbench]

Can this operation be done in a 3D view? I use mostly 3D views. thanks!

[Aaron.Lu]

Unfortunately, I tried but failed with an exception: 

Autodesk.Revit.Exceptions.InternalException: Unexpected internal error: code 1.

In UI we can't do that either, so I should vote for infeasible to do this in 3D view.