Tap into rendering pipeline - draw a simple rectangle over the viewport

[DanielKP2Z9V]

I'm building a command to list issues on a project that are located in the model, but I don't want to create new objects (e.g. text symbols) due to various reasons (they can be accidentally printed, they can be slow to hide/show), so I want to display them as overlays in the revit viewport. By overlays I mean something as simple as a rectangle showing where an issue is located - the issue description, date etc. may be displayed in a separate window.

Has anyone tapped into revit's rendering pipeline to draw such custom effects directly in the viewport? For a test I just want to display a rectangle.

I saw a few interesting demos of DirectContext3D API - would that be the right approach?

[eN27]

Yup, there is no other option. DirectContext3D API is quite rough in use but is very performant, one downside there is no support for rendering text.

[DanielKP2Z9V]

Interesting, thanks for confirming that. Yeah, I didn't expect any fancy "immediate mode" GUIs (although that would be cool), but a simple rectangle/point to locate an issue in 3D would suffice.

Do you know any existing plugins using this API already? I'd be keen on checking some sample projects.

[eN27]

There is only one small open-source project worth checking and it is located in Revit SDK under name DuplicateGraphics.

I have used this API for highlighting things in Revit model in a few plugins, but they are not open-sourced:

[jeremy_tammik]

You can also search for more DirectContext3D samples and documentation on The Building Coder:

https://www.google.com/search?q=DirectContext3D&as_sitesearch=thebuildingcoder.typepad.com

[Moustafa_K]

I usually use   ITemporaryGraphicsHandler ...

it is very useful... at least for me to handle such cases, the draw back of this class, it is available from 2023

hope this helps