topic Re: Get all wall composites in Archicad C++ API

Get all wall composites

Emkave — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:33:37 GMT

Good day to everybody. I have a struggle with retrieving the whole data about wall composites that exist in an Archicad project.
Here is the empty Archicad project:

and here is the list of wall composites:

I will be really glad if somebody tells me a way how to get all of the composites without passing an element or guid or any other data to the API. I just want to make a code that would return me the list of all existing wall composites.

Thank you in advance!

Operating system used: Windows 11

Re: Get all wall composites

JeffH — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 23:11:07 GMT

I have a schedule built into our template that does that. Nothing was needed outside of the Archicad file to create this.

Re: Get all wall composites

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 23:30:16 GMT

@Emkave,

Do you want to do this with the API or using Schedules, without the use of API?

@JeffH,

Doesn't your method require at least one placed element for each Composite for them to be displayed in the Schedule?

Re: Get all wall composites

Barry Kelly — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:07:44 GMT

In the Attribute Manager (not the Attribute Palette), you can select all of the composites and save as a text file.

Barry.

Re: Get all wall composites

Emkave — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 07:57:01 GMT

Yes, I would like to make it work with the API. I know that such data is stored in Archicad somewhere, but I need that data to be extracted somehow via the API

Re: Get all wall composites

Noemi Balogh — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 08:54:21 GMT

@Emkave if you need help with the API, please ask your questions in the Developer Hub.

Re: Get all wall composites

JeffH — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 13:40:09 GMT

That is correct.

I use it moreso as an audit, to make sure walls don't get added into the project that don't follow the correct naming convention that is needed for our wall tags to work.

Re: Get all wall composites

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:33:02 GMT

OK, in this case, I have moved the topic to the Archicad API forum as that is more relevant.

Hopefully, API gurus will read it there and will be able to help you.

Re: Get all wall composites

Emkave — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:34:25 GMT

Apologies, I am just pretty new in this community and still need some time to adapt

Re: Get all wall composites

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:34:58 GMT

No worries.

Re: Get all wall composites

Emkave — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:35:01 GMT

Thank you very much for the correction of the topic's placement

Re: Get all wall composites

BerndSchwarzenbacher — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 18:52:04 GMT

Hi Emkave,

This code prints the composite names to the session report (works for AC27+):

ACAPI_Attribute_EnumerateAttributesByType (API_CompWallID, [](API_Attribute& compAttr) { ACAPI_WriteReport (compAttr.header.name, false); });

For more details about handling attributes or how to do this for older AC versions you can check the "Attribute_Test" example project in the respective API DevKits.

Or feel free to ask more for more details.

Best,
Bernd

Re: Get all wall composites

Emkave — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 19:10:19 GMT

Hello. Thank you for the reply. Is there a function for archicads of versions 26 and below?

Re: Get all wall composites

BerndSchwarzenbacher — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:26:01 GMT

Something like this should work in <=AC26 (not tested):

API_AttrTypeID typeID = API_CompWallID; API_AttributeIndex num = 0; GSErrCode err = ACAPI_Attribute_GetNum (typeID, &num); if (err != NoError) { return err; } for (API_AttributeIndex id = 1; id <= num; ++id) { API_Attribute attr{}; attr.header.typeID = typeID; attr.header.index = id; GS::UniString tmpUniString; attr.header.uniStringNamePtr = &tmpUniString; err = ACAPI_Attribute_Get (&attr); if (err == APIERR_DELETED || err == APIERR_BADINDEX) { continue; } if (err != NoError) { return err; } ACAPI_WriteReport (tmpUniString, false); }

Re: Get all wall composites

Emkave — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 16:21:53 GMT

Thanks to BerndSchwarzenbacher! Both solutions worked as I actually wanted! Thanks a lot.
Btw, I also wonder if I can actually extract the composite if I have actually selected an element. I was inspecting the memo of the selected element and the only information I found there about the composites were an integer values. I guess I have to pass them to API_Attribute attr {} variable as well. Hope my intuition is correct.

Thanks anyway!

Re: Get all wall composites

BerndSchwarzenbacher — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 16:26:49 GMT

Happy to help 🙂

Your intuition is correct. An element only stores the attribute index of a component. So set the index in API_Attribute attr{} and then use ACAPI_Attribute_Get. Also be aware of ACAPI_Attribute_GetDef & ACAPI_Attribute_GetDefExt for more details of attributes.