Get preview image of a view in Bitmap

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I would like to get a good view of an element in a document in Bitmap format. How would I go about doing this? I need it in Bitmap format because I would like to put it in winforms, showing a preview of the element.

I've checked out doc.ExportImage but that does not return a Bitmap and instead saves the file somewhere else. 

I've also looked at elemType.GetPreviewImage, but the element I am looking at has no preview image. 

Thanks in advance.

[jeremytammik]

Since the two methods you mention are what is currently offered by the Revit API, I would suggest performing some research to find out how you can use them. It might be a long time before any other options crop up.

You could use ExportImage and then process to resulting file to retrieve a bitmap from that.

Alternatively, you could research how to ensure that GetPreviewImage does indeed return a suitable result.

Here are some examples showing how it can be used:

• https://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2010/05/get-type-id-and-preview-image.html
• https://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2011/05/set-preview-image.html

[Anonymous]

Alright got it thanks.

Since those are the only two options, I'll export the image into a temporary location, then load them into Bitmap. 

[jeremytammik]

Way to go!