Revit model management in Excel

Feb 14, 2015

Model management can involve some tedious tasks. Cleaning up the mess created by an unruly user when he import all categories of an old Revit model is probably the most tedious of these tasks.

When someone import elements from another model, we quickly end up with thousand of view templates, filters, and other user created views which can become totally unmanageable.

Here come the BIM Manager, who spend two tedious days sorting these views and campaigning against view proliferation.

To help address this problem, I create a small piece of code for exporting every view, template and filter to three CSV files.

To read these files in a meaningful way, I use PowerPivot in Excel to create some kind of a small database, with two relationships :

We can then create tables displaying how filters and views are used, like how many filters are used, or where the templates are applied.

Once loaded in the PowerPivot tool, this data allows us to quickly identify which template or filter are used and delete the unwanted ones.

The entire source code is available below, please feel free to use it for your own projects.

public void ExportViewTemplatesList()
{
    Document doc = this.ActiveUIDocument.Document;

    //find all view
    IEnumerable<View> views =
from elem in new FilteredElementCollector(doc).OfClass(typeof(View))
let view = elem as View
select view;

    //Create a text file for exporting
    List<string> lines = new List<string>();
    //Add the first line
    lines.Add("TemplateName");

    foreach (View view in views)
    {
        if (view.IsTemplate)
        {
            lines.Add(view.Name);
        }
    }

    lines = lines.Distinct().ToList();
    string exportpath = @"templates.csv";
    File.WriteAllLines(exportpath, lines.ToArray(), Encoding.UTF8);
}

public void ExportFiltersList()
{
    Document doc = this.ActiveUIDocument.Document;

    //find all filters
    IEnumerable<ParameterFilterElement> filters =
from elem in new FilteredElementCollector(doc)
.OfClass(typeof(ParameterFilterElement))
let filter = elem as ParameterFilterElement
select filter;

    //Create a text file for exporting
    List<string> lines = new List<string>();
    //Add the first line
    lines.Add("FilterName");

    foreach (ParameterFilterElement filter in filters)
    {
        lines.Add(filter.Name);
    }

    lines = lines.Distinct().ToList();
    string exportpath = @"filters.csv";
    File.WriteAllLines(exportpath, lines.ToArray(), Encoding.UTF8);
}

public void ExportViewsList()
{
    Document doc = this.ActiveUIDocument.Document;

    //find all view
    IEnumerable<View> views =
from elem in new FilteredElementCollector(doc).OfClass(typeof(View))
let view = elem as View
select view;

    //Create a text file for exporting
    List<string> lines = new List<string>();
    //Add the first line
    lines.Add("ViewName;ViewType;IsTemplate;"
        + "TemplateName;LevelName;FilterName");

    foreach (View v in views)
    {
        Level level = v.GenLevel;
        string levelName = "";
        if (level != null)
        {
            levelName = level.Name;
        }

        //Get view filters
        ICollection<ElementId> filterIds;
        try
        {
            filterIds = v.GetFilters();
        }
        catch (Autodesk.Revit.Exceptions.InvalidOperationException)
        {
            filterIds = new List<ElementId>();
        }

        string templateName = "";

        if (v.ViewTemplateId.IntegerValue != -1)
        {
            templateName = doc.GetElement(v.ViewTemplateId).Name;
        }

        string viewinfos =
            v.ViewName + ";" +
            v.ViewType + ";" +
            v.IsTemplate.ToString() + ";" +
            templateName + ";" +
            levelName;

        if (filterIds.Count != 0)
        {
            foreach (ElementId filterId in filterIds)
            {
                string filterName = doc.GetElement(filterId).Name;
                string line = viewinfos + ";" + filterName;
                lines.Add(line);
            }
        }
        else
        {
            lines.Add(viewinfos);
        }
    }

    string exportpath = @"views.csv";
    File.WriteAllLines(exportpath, lines.ToArray(), Encoding.UTF8);
}