Family Document: Get the "Family Type" parameter selected "Category" Instance

[GJennings-BM]

Hello, 

I am writing an add-in that will collect family parameter data within a Family Document.   I have come to a challenge that I cannot yet solve.  When creating family parameters, the user can select <family type>. They are then prompted to select a "Category" to assign with the parameter.  (i.e. Type of Parameter becomes   "Family type: Structural Connections"). 

While reading all family parameters, I can get the ParameterType as "FamilyType", but I cannot determine a method to get the assigned Category.  I have checked Revit Lookup and Visual Studio extensively.    

Thank you for any insights you can offer.  

[Songohu_85]

Hello, here you go:
https://www.revitapidocs.com/2023/1c008d27-9e61-362c-308c-8b718ee0f8df.htm

[GJennings-BM · Accepted solution]

Thank you @Songohu_85 for the link.  I had to take a different approach, but it all works perfectly now.  

Below is the code and I hope it helps others in the community. 

After collecting all of the family parameters, I did the following lines of code to get the selected instance Category of the parameter type "FamilyType":

// where "fp" is the family parameter

string familyParameterName = fp.Definition.Name;
FamilyParameter familyTypeParameter = familyManager.get_Parameter(familyParameterName);

ElementId familyTypeElementId = familyManager.CurrentType.AsElementId(familyTypeParameter);
Element familyTypeElement = familyDocument.GetElement(familyTypeElementId);

Category category = familyTypeElement.Category;
string categoryName = category?.Name ?? "N/A";

As you can see it is very straight forward and not convoluted at all! 🤔

[Songohu_85]

Hi GJennings-BM,

Good your solution works!

If family parameter is of "family type: category" then you can directly get BuiltInCategory from ForgeTypeId so I'd do it this way:

	FamilyManager fmgr = Document.FamilyManager;
	foreach (FamilyParameter fp in fmgr.Parameters) 
	{
		ForgeTypeId ftid = fp.Definition.GetDataType();
		if(Category.IsBuiltInCategory(ftid))
		{
			BuiltInCategory category = Category.GetBuiltInCategory(ftid);
			TaskDialog.Show("Info", Enum.GetName(typeof(BuiltInCategory), category));
		}
	}