Wrapper types? Why?

Revit
1

I wanted to get the points of a roof, exactly as described in this thread from two years ago:

As you can see in OP’s error message, there is a type-mismatch.

One glance at the Dynamo codebase on Github shows that the Dynamo.Elements.Roof class is a Dynamo-specific wrapper around Revit.DB.Elements.Roofbase class, as the revit class is an internal property nested inside the Dynamo class.

Ideally, the user expects dynamo nodes to operate on Revit types. Ideally the design of a Dynamo node, especially a node in base Dynamo if wrapping a Revit type, must handle conversion to and from a Revit type.

I’m not sure any node in base Dynamo Elements > Roof menu can be used, as there’s no clearly defined node to change type. And a “Select Model Element” node is useless as demonstrated above. Any suggestions on what I’m missing?

Also, i’m guessing that Dynamo.Revit.Point is another wrapper. Is there any documentation of a mapping between Revit types and Dynamo types, including a reference on how to perform type conversions?

2

A little more research shows that there is no public constructor or static method around to create a Dynamo.Elements.Roof which could possibly be used to build a custom dynamo node.

The class does have an internal static method called FromExisting which is exactly what we need to build a custom Dynamo node to convert the two, however it’s internal and not accessible.

A search of the codebase shows that the FromExisting method isn’t called anywhere else in the codebase:

Should I open an issue on Github to request that FromExisting be changed from internal to public ?