Revit Installer 2021

[mangrove-art]

I suppose this is allready planed @daren-thomas ?
Greetings Jakob

[daren-thomas]

@mangrove-art, actually (and sadly) no. As of next month, I will not have access to Revit anymore and the project will need a new maintainer.

[mangrove-art]

Dear Daren
it sad to hear that. Hope you're having good opportunities for your future projects. Maybe a sort of short roadmap what's super important would be helpful. I'll miss your precious work.
Good luck
Jakob

[jeremytammik]

Hi Daren, very sorry to hear that. Would it help if Autodesk provided you access to Revit? Or are other issues a larger problem? Such and time, energy and priorities, for instance?

[daren-thomas]

@jeremytammik long time no see! (one of the things that bummed me out most about google reader shutting down was not reading your blog anymore... i never did get another rss reader i liked...)

you're spot on: time, energy, priorities. i wrote RPS to scratch an itch. it seems it's a common itch, but i haven't used revit for the last 6 years and i doubt i will be in the future. can you maybe explain: i'm under the impression pyRevit is a good alternative, no?

[jeremytammik]

@daren-thomas wow. I am very impressed you kept it running for so long without using it yourself any longer. I am very interested in PythonRevitShell for the simple reason that it did all I needed in a minimalistic way. I used it very little, very seldom, and was enthused every single time. I have never used pyRevit myself, so I really cannot tell. We should ask @eirannejad what he thinks. Maybe a migration guide? I will happily blog about whatever recommendation we come up with. Ehsan, what do you think we should do?

[jeremytammik]

@daren-thomas what are you up to nowadays, then? why did the itch go away? do you have any new interesting itches that you are working on?

[eirannejad]

@jeremytammik @daren-thomas Hey guys. Thanks for keeping me in the loop here. I've gotten many requests during the past week to incorporate some sort of python editor into pyRevit. Seems like a good feature to add since pyRevit has everything related to python development for Revit except a code editor/shell. RPS has always been my defacto shell 😅

[jeremytammik]

@eirannejad well that sounds promising indeed. i will sorely need some replacement for RPS if it ever disappears.

[daren-thomas]

There's not really much reason we can't just keep updating it to the next version - if it ain't broke?

@jeremytammik I just started at a new company that is nowhere near the building industry. The itch went away a few years ago when I stopped working on a Revit plugin - RPS is only really usefull when you're using Revit..

If you guys are also working on Rhino, I also just "abandoned" a project called honey-badger that allows using python in Grasshopper but actually store the source code in proper files (for git!) as opposed to proprietary blobs... it's a lot less polished, but we do have one project hive that makes use of it for some of the models... I always thought it could be a cool way to set up grasshopper components in a declarative way, but never got around to creating a GUI (with treeview) for editing component data...

Working in plugin environments (like Revit API and Grasshopper) is always a bit messy. So itches to scratch arise naturally...

There is no reason for RPS to go away... it's just time for someone else to take over the (small) maintainance...

[daren-thomas]

@GertjanVDBVK has just merged an update that brings RPS to 2021! All that's missing now is an executable (by running the provided .iss file with InnoSetup) and linking it to the README.md - anyone up for that?

[jeremytammik]

Is InnoSetup included with Visual Studio? If not, I don't have it. I can gladly link to the readme once the exe is available.

[daren-thomas]

@jeremytammik https://jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

[jeremytammik]

@GertjanVDBVK and @daren-thomas , I downloaded InnoSetup and would like to run it but cannot, since I cannot build successfully. Did you update the repo with the successful build for Revit 2021? Note that the installer requires the release build, not just the debug one. Thank you!

[daren-thomas]

@jeremytammik the last merge to master should have fixed all the issues to build for Revit 2021 - alas, I can't really test it anymore. Is there a specific problem with building?

[jeremytammik]

I get hundreds of error messages. Still, mysteriously, I am able to compile the setup exe. However, it does not work. I think the hundreds of errors are seriously meant.

• rps_release_build_errors.txt

Sorry, this is over my head.

@GertjanVDBVK, since you are able to compile, could you also install InnoSetup and create the setup exe? I found the steps very quick and easy... easier than compiling RPS :-)

Thank you!

[sweco-beb283]

I'll give it a try this week.

[sweco-beb283]

@daren-thomas @jeremytammik
#113
Created a setup using the script, man that was so much easier than building rps.

I also got a few tons of errors when trying to build for release, but I fixed that (locally) by disabling all build targets for previous versions. This build only builds for dotnet 48 now.
Some testing is in order. It works on my system though.

[jeremytammik]

Brilliant! Thank you very much! Yes, the InnoSetup run did seem to be very simple to me too, and I am glad and grateful you got the hard part resolved! Cheers, Jeremy.

[jeremytammik]

Did you add the setup.exe to the repository somewhere? I cannot find it. An Output directory is provided and populated with previous versions.

[sweco-beb283]

It still needs to be merged,
perhaps you can download the setup from the pull request I created?
2d883cf

Also, I've had a colleague test it, seems to work.

EDIT: You can probably download if from my fork
https://github.com/GertjanVDBVK/revitpythonshell/tree/master/Output

[sweco-beb283]

@jeremytammik The installer has been tested and accepted, it should now be in the outputs folder.

@daren-thomas Thank you for your work on python revit shell. I think it'd b an understatement if I said that you've opened some doors for people. I'm a bit sad to see it go. But I understand that life and circumstances change, and we all have to go forward in life, so, best of luck on your new venture. And this is supposed to be the and part, but I couldn't think of anything. So there.

[jeremytammik]

i studied how the setup.exe was added to the readme in previous versions. it was done by creating a new release of the repository and adding the setup.exe as a binary asset to that. i don't think i can do so without being a collaborator or maintainer or something. i added a link to the setup.exe in the Output folder. can you make me a collaborator so I can create a proper new Revit 2021 release and add it to that? Or can someone handle that task? Thank you!

[eirannejad]

Sorry I forgot to add those. Just added a new release and download link to the README file

[Thomas84]

In some circumstances with the actual installer not all of the files are successfully installed to the correct folder. All files in C:\Program Files (x86)\RevitPythonShell\20XX\ are fine. But if your windows login is not an admin, you get an prompt to login with an admin account. If you do that, it will install the addin files to the wrong folder for example to C:\Users\adminaccount\AppData\Roaming\RevitPythonShell\
In such a case you need to

• copy after the installation the folder C:\Users\adminaccount\AppData\Roaming\RevitPythonShell\ to %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\

and

• copy the addins file (for each year seperately) from C:\Users\adminaccount\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2021\RevitPythonShell.addin to the folder %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2021\

Improvement suggestion for the installer: I think it would be better to place the files to a addin folder for all users ( C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit 2021\AddIns and C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit\Addins )