Need help to Integrate REVIT with web application

[Eleanor_Mitch]

Basically, we're considering using Revit for a project in which we display models in our web application. 

We need to be able to send some data that will alter the model. We'd like to know the extent to which Revit can interface with external Reactjs application.

Can we export a Revit project outside of Revit and have it embedded into other external applications that will call Revit APIs?

If not, are there any protocols to integrate Revit projects so we can modify file elements such as changing color of object(s) or rotating view using external data that we feed it?

@mikako_harada any ideas? Tks!

[jeremy_tammik]

Dear Eleanor,

Use of the Revit API requires a valid Revit API context. Such a context is only provided with in the event handler of a Revit API callback function. Hence, you cannot call the Revit API from outside Revit. You need a Revit installation on a Windows PC and a running session of Revit with an add-in implemented and loaded into it to use the standard .NET Revit API.

That said, the situation you describe sounds as it it could be well handled by an application making use of the Autodesk Platform Services APS (formerly Forge) and its Design Automation API for Revit DA4R:

• https://aps.autodesk.com/en/docs/design-automation/v3/developers_guide/overview/

It enables you to display, view, query and manipulate a Revit BIM fully integrated into a web-based workflow in coordination with other web-based components including full use of react.

Both the question you raise and everything following from the answer above has been discussed frequently recently both here in the Revit API discussion forum and elsewhere, e.g., on StackOverflow. Here are two of the shortest examples:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/74981263/metadata-extraction-from-revit-ifc-models 
• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-api-forum/does-revit2022-support-through-revitnet-dll-start-ui-...

Best regards and Happy New Year, 

Jeremy

[Eleanor_Mitch]

Hi @jeremy_tammik 

Good morning and Happy New Year to you as well. Thank you for your rapid reply and assistance!

Follow-on Question Please:

Does forgeviewer have a way to set options on rvt file to update the data in the model?

Thank you! Best regards, Eleanor

[jeremy_tammik]

Dear Eleanor,

I am obliged to be nit-picking and respond that the Forge viewer no longer exists.

Let's talk about the Autodesk Platform Services (APS, formerly Forge) viewer. 🙂

The viewer is a pure viewer. It enables you to view a given CAD seed model after translation to a highly optimised streamable format. For the viewer, the CAD seed model does not exist, never has existed, and never will. The translator saw it, the viewer does not. So, obviously, the viewer cannot be used to modify the CAD seed model.

However, as explained above as well as in all the other answers I pointed out, you can modify and even generate a CAD seed model from scratch using the APS Design Automation API, e.g., in this case, for RVT, with the Design Automation API for Revit, DA4R:

• https://aps.autodesk.com/en/docs/design-automation/v3/developers_guide/overview/

Lots of samples available in the APS docs and blog.