Visual Studio 2015 templates for Revit add-ins

[Andrey_Bushman]

Hi,

I need a set of convenient Visual Studio templates for creation of  Revit add-ins. I am very lazy person and I prefer that the boring operations were done by a template instead of me.

At first I wanted to improve the VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard template by Jeremy Tammik. But Jeremy ignored my pull request. Therefore I refused the subsequent attempts to improve his template. Therefore I made templates myself. 

Here are my Visual Studio 2015 templates for Revit add-ins creating: https://github.com/Andrey-Bushman/Revit2017AddInTemplateSet

Also it contains the set of video-lessons with English comments.

* #001. Download and install the templates: 
  		https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYm-yxQ9jFk&t=1s

  * #002. Create new project:
  		https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU5HoTxpgbk&t=5s

  * #003. Add new command:
  		https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtw8PAf5eus&t=2s

  * #004. Link the command with the command availability:
  		https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_79p0CnKJY&t=8s

  * #005. Add ribbon tabs and panels:
  		https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlskC5PTmH8&t=4s

  * #006. Template resources using:
  		https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aQ30GHl3as&t=1s

  * #007. Multilanguage add-ins creating:
  		https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abxy-Ynff3w

Also, I wrote the article about it in my blog here (Russian text).

Perhaps these templates will be useful for other programmers too.

Best regards,

Andrey

[jeremytammik]

Dear Andrey,

Thank you very much for you fine contribution and complete documentation!

I am very sorry that I have not been able to integrate your pull request yet.

The last days have been awfully busy.

If at all possible, I imagine it would be useful for the entire Revit API developer community if we can manage to maintain a single optimal set of Wizards that satisfies all needs.

Will my version still be compatible with yours if I merge your pull request?

Obviously, the VB version will not be modified, and therefore be out of sync with the C# one... does anyone care?

What do you think? Should we aim at maintaining just one version together, or keep the two separate?

If you prefer the latter, I will gladly add a link in the documentation to point from A to B:

A = https://github.com/jeremytammik/VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard

B = https://github.com/Andrey-Bushman/Revit2017AddInTemplateSet

In that case, we should also compile a list of differences to explain to people why they might want to choose one above the other.

Thank you!

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Andrey_Bushman]

Hi Jeremy,

> I am very sorry that I have not been able to integrate your pull request yet.
> The last days have been awfully busy.

No problem. Don't worry.

> Will my version still be compatible with yours if I merge your pull request?

Revit2017AddInTemplateSet is not based on the VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard. Revit2017AddInTemplateSet has other architecture and ideas.
Therefore Revit2017AddInTemplateSet can't be merged with VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard through Git.

> Obviously, the VB version will not be modified, and therefore be out of sync with the C# one... does anyone care?

I don't use VB.NET. I created the templates for programming language which I use. But if someone creates variant for VB and will send this patch to me, then I won't mind and I will accept this patch provided that it is made qualitatively.

> If at all possible, I imagine it would be useful for the entire Revit API developer community
> if we can manage to maintain a single optimal set of Wizards that satisfies all needs.
>
> What do you think? Should we aim at maintaining just one version together, or keep the two separate?

Jeremy, if you will apply my pull request and replace the hard references of Revit API to their NuGet package then your template will be more convenient for using. Did you read my wishes about VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard in my article which I pointed in my previous post?

All developers are different. Some of them prefer to write code manually complettely. VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard template can be interesting for such people. Other developers prefer to concentrate completely on the solvable task, without being distracted by the minor things, such as UI creation. For such people can be interesting Revit2017AddInTemplateSet templates.

My template is more difficult than yours because it shall decide automatically much more tasks. But my template isn't so difficult that it was difficult to be understood. Having created the new project on the basis of my template it is possible to study the generated code and to understand how it works.

Therefore perhaps it makes a sense that at the same time there were two different templates (VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard and Revit2017AddInTemplateSet) that allow to people to select that which more suits them.

In my opinion your template requires improving. If it is interesting for you then I am redy to discuss it. At this case I recommend to you to read those notes which I listed in the article of my blog.

> In that case, we should also compile a list of differences to explain to people why they might want to choose one above the other.

No problem. I can do it if it will be necessary.
 
P.S.
Jeremy, in my opinion VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard is not a "wizard". I expected that wizard opens some dialog window and allows to user to point some predefined settings on the base of which wizard will generate a new project. Am I right? Therefore my projects haven't "Wizard" word inside of their names.

Best regards,
Andrey

[Andrey_Bushman]

I turned off the `Enable native code debugging` option in the project templates. The reason is here.

[jeremytammik]

Dear Andrey,

I agree with you that template is a better name than wizard, and that these are pure simple templates.

For historical reasons, I'll stay true to that mistake.

Yes, I think a list of differences between the two templates would be extremely useful.

I published a description of what we have so far on the blog:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2017/02/new-visual-studio-2015-templates-for-revit-add-ins....

I will gladly add that list there and update the VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard GitHub repo documentation to include this information as well, to enable developers to choose between the two.

Thank you very much!

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Andrey_Bushman]

Dear Jeremy,

> Yes, I think a list of differences between the two templates would be extremely useful.

> I will gladly add that list there and update the VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard GitHub repo documentation to include this information as well, to enable developers to choose between the two.

Look the attached file, please. I created the small comparative table of these templates.

Best regards,

Andrey

[jeremytammik]

Dear Andrey,

Thank you for the comparison.

I added it to the blog post:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2017/02/new-visual-studio-2015-templates-for-revit-add-ins....

I also added a pointer to your Revit2017AddInTemplateSet to the VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard GitHub repo:

https://github.com/jeremytammik/VisualStudioRevitAddinWizard

I hope the community makes good use of both!

Thank you very much!

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Andrey_Bushman]

The existing templates were significantly improved. Information about these improvings was added into the readme.txt file:  https://github.com/Andrey-Bushman/Revit2017AddInTemplateSet/commit/e1a3ceb811717929b5d758cacd41e9f46...

[jeremytammik]

Cool.

Thank you!

I submitted a pull request to convert your text readme documentation to markdown for better readability and github standard compatibility.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Andrey_Bushman]

Thank you, Jeremy.

I applied your patch. I forgot to mention that now the projects created on the base of these templates can be checked by PVS-Studio static code analyzer.  I will add this info right now.

[jeremytammik]

Thank you, Andrey.

I pointed out your template improvements on the blog:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2017/02/add-in-templates-supporting-edit-and-continue.html

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Andrey_Bushman]

Thank you Jeremy,

I hope it may be interesting for other people. These templates are used by Maksim Markevich and I only still. 🙂

Best regards,

Andrey