Create a New Ribbon Tab

I usually don't post much stuff from The Building Coder and various Revit API blogs for the simple reason that I don't want to scare many of my readers. I know when I first saw a screenshot of Revit API code I was a little freaked out. Now, I find it a whole new frontier for me and love to read about it (even if I only understand some of it). Here is a great one from The Building Coder and Redbolts:

Custom Ribbon Tab - Building Coder

I am still on tour presenting at the Western European DevDays conferences, and with no time for blogging or responding to comments. In fact, I have almost no time for anything at all except presenting, meeting and discussing with participants during the day, and getting from one city to the next in the evenings. Right now I am sitting in the airport waiting for a plain to Milano. Back to Bella Italia, albeit for less than twenty-four hours.

I was hoping to find time to prepare a few blog posts in advance for the coming weeks, when I will be gone on holidays and vacation. Friday is supposed to be my last working day this year, and I am starting to wonder whether I will be able to just walk away from all the unresolved issues and leave them to lie until next year.

Anyway, in a sleepless hour in between I noticed that Augusto Gonçalves responded once again to a question that has already come up a few times in the past, so his interesting result is well worth while presenting, even if it is not directly useful in the context of the Revit API. It deals with the frequent question on whether it is possible to add your own ribbon tab to the Revit user interface.

Question: I expect the answer to this is no, but I thought I would at least ask anyway. Is it possible to create a new ribbon tab in Revit, similar to AutoCAD 2010, or are panels within the Add-Ins tab and items within those panels the only ribbon objects that can be accessed and created from a Revit add-in? ... Continue to post to read the answer...





Merry Christmas – Ribbons,tabs and Panels

It’s that time of the year, so why not finish with a post on what has probably been the most controversial aspect of the Revit 2010 release, the ribbon. In general I’ve stayed clear of UI customisation because I’d prefer Autodesk get it right. However, for API users the ability to add a tab for their own commands has been on the wishlist since the ribbon went live. Jeremy talked about it here with the limitation you couldn’t run API commands.
Using a little smoke and mirrors it is possible however to run API commands. The key is creating a Revit ribbon panel not a base Autodesk panel. This then allows you to use all the standard constructs for creating buttons and therefore running API commands when the button is clicked.

The code is very similar to creating buttons using the standard API’s.... Continue...