FindInserts what does includeShadows flag do?

[hzamani]

Hi,

Curious what does the includeShadows flag do in FindInserts method of the HostObject class.

The documentation says "True if shadows should be included in the return." But this doesn't make any sense to me.

Could anyone possibly shine some light on this?

[jeremytammik]

Good question. Thank you for asking.

I see two more of the same in the revitapidocs page:

https://www.revitapidocs.com/2020/58990230-38cb-3af7-fd25-96ed3215a43d.htm

• Albano Gheller (8 months ago): What are shadows and shared embedded?
• Александр Пекшев (2 years ago): what is Shadows??

I'll ask the development team for you.

[jeremytammik · Accepted solution]

The development team replied:

An internal WallShadowCutoutGStep is created when 2 walls are joined, e.g., by Modify > Geometry > Join, and then a window is placed on one wall.

In that case, Revit will cut an opening on the other joined wall, as you can see in this picture:

For this API - FindInserts, here is a short demo - I try to find the Inserts on the joined wall but not the wall with the window.

The window instance (ID: 354965) is returned if includeShadows is true, and nothing returned for false.

Many thanks to Phil Xia for this detailed explanation!

[Revitalizer]

Thank you for bringing light into the shadow 🙂

Rudi

[hzamani]

Thank you very much Jeremy for following this up and the complete answer.

Makes much sense now.

[amir.aroesti]

Hi @jeremytammik ,

And what about includeSharedEmbeddedInserts ?

[jeremytammik]

Have you searched the Internet for the answer yourself yet? I see a number of hits when I try it out...

[amir.aroesti]

the fact that I found out this post of related subject can indicate that I did try to search the internet before.

maybe not good enough but I tried.☹️

[jeremytammik]

Okey-doke. Well, I cannot do much more myself. Searching for 'Revit includeSharedEmbeddedInserts' turns up this:

• https://duckduckgo.com/?q=revit+includeSharedEmbeddedInserts
• https://help.autodesk.com/view/RVT/2021/ENU/?guid=GUID-FCD379AE-560E-4570-B8AA-9F4BBCC7F171

That shows an image showing a sample result with the following explanation:

Get the door, window, or other inserts that are hosted in the embedded wall.

[amir.aroesti]

Thanks @jeremytammik