Toposurface - Change interior point to boundary point?

[Anonymous]

Good afternoon,

Is there any way to change an interior point to a boundary point or vise versa using Revit's API? I want to do this so I can display the boundary of the topography I have generated correctly. I can't seem to find any resources discussing this topic.

Thank you in advance!

[Anonymous]

Bump

[jeremytammik]

I'm asking the development team for you...

[Anonymous]

That sounds great! I'm looking forward to the response. Thank you Jeremy!

[jeremytammik]

They answer:

I am reasonably certain that points are considered boundary points of a regular TopographySurface based on geometry. If a new point is added and it's outside or on the boundary of the region enclosed by the exterior of the connections of current boundary points, that new point is a boundary point. Otherwise, it's interior. For an existing point, it's either already a boundary point, or already interior. Remember that topography surfaces cannot be concave, only convex from their exterior points.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Anonymous]

Thank you for following up on this post. I understand the current behavior of the toposurface and wish to make suggestions to improve the current methods. I attempted to make a post on the ideas forum; however, my post would not go through.

For now, here is what I intended to post. Maybe you have some thoughts or position to make this happen! Here is what I wrote:

Defining Toposurface Boundary Proposal

Issue:

Insufficient control over defining toposurface boundary points.

Occurs:

• Generating toposurface from Revit API/Dynamo/UI context
• Loading toposurface from DWG or Civil Structures Extension

Current Solutions:

• Using split surface tool
• Only way to use through Revit API is PostCommand, which is not flexible
• Limited to splitting surface into exactly two surfaces
• Using through the UI is time consuming and repetitive
• Adding new points outside current boundary to create new boundary points
• Time consuming and repetitive
• Unnecessary work around

Proposed Solutions:

• Allow user to change point type from interior to boundary or vise versa from both UI & API context
• Give user more API tools to use split surface tool
• Allow user to specify which points are boundary points when generating Toposurface

Screenshot:

                                 Issue                                                                                        Proposed

[jeremytammik]

Please try again. It is working for the rest of the community. Thank you!

By the way, what you are asking for is support for a concave TopoSurface element.

Maybe such a wish already exists?

[Anonymous]

hi Jeremy,

I have been looking for this opportunity for half a year already.

if it really exists, I think many would like to know about it.
I’m looking for any way to get tight topography boundaries in order to achieve a concave contour or topography with a hole.

in the user interface, I have at once some ways to achieve this result (split toposurface, merge toposurface), but I didn't find the API way.......?

[jeremytammik]

Afaik, there is no way, neither in the UI or API. What you describe sounds like workarounds. The workarounds may work in both. For the real thing, as said, please file or vote for the wish list entry.

[Anonymous]

Hello Jeremy.

Thanks for the answer.

I just want to apologize for the misunderstandings, I did not see that you were talking about existing wishes and decided that you know some way, but alas.

But, since we will talk about workarounds, maybe you know some?

I think about the use of PostCommand + windows api ...
what do you say?

P.S. Of course I have already voted for the relevant wishes.

[jeremytammik]

Nope, sorry. Cool, thank you for voting! No problem whatsoever, it is a pleasure to help and another to misunderstand... enjoy it either way  🙂

[Mitchell.currie]

Use a subregion and hide it

[jeremy_tammik]

Thank you Mitchell for this suggestion to the long-standing issue. Added it to the blog:

https://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2023/06/brepbuilder-and-toposurface-interior.html#3