Does Revit Have A Solid That Acts As A Proper Element?

[Anonymous]

Revit has lots of built-in object types, obviously gathered from wide experience of the construction industry. But there will never be 100% of the things that people want, or the existing objects won't always match the style and construction that the user wants 100%. 

Is there such a thing as a solid in Revit, that acts as an Element object through the API and thus can be returned from a FilteredElementCollector? I have played around with Forms (masses), but when I run through the elements in the drawing, there doesn't seem to be any object that matches it. 

I even tried putting the mass in a family and later loading the family, but while it inserted the mass, there was still nothing in the list of elements returned that matched it. 

Basically I was hoping to be able to create a custom solid / mass / form through the API (profile shape + extrusion) and fashion it - boolean subtractions, sectioning, that sort of thing, and be able to group such solids into larger assemblies, so we're creating a completely custom set of components and assemblies - insertable objects with properties that suit us. 

Any suggestions? The ability to modify existing objects (in a way that significantly adapts their shape / constituent components) seems very limited. 

[Joe.Ye · Accepted solution]

Revit 2014 exposed the API to create a family using any given solid.
The available class is FreeFormElement, You can use the FreeFormElement.Create(Solid) to create a FreeFormElement.
You can use the GeometryCreationUtilities class to create solids, and BooleanOperationsUtils class to do boolean Subtractions, and other operations. Finally use the resuting solid to create a family by FreeFromElement class.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for this information. By the time we have a product ready for release for Revit we may be able to say that we only support as far back as Revit 2014 (normally we try to support a wide range), but I will also look into other options just in case.