element mouseover attributes

[Anonymous]

Is there some way to programmatically get the attributes of an element that are shown in the tooltip when mousing over the element? For example, if I mouseover an armchair that I just inserted, the tooltip reads:

Object
Name: Armchair 01 10
Base Elevation: 0"
Layer: A-FURN

It's not clear from the ACAPI_Element_Get... API how, for example, I could retrieve the name ("Armchair 01 10") of the element.

thanks in advance, Chuck

[Ralph Wessel]

csh wrote:
It's not clear from the ACAPI_Element_Get... API how, for example, I could retrieve the name ("Armchair 01 10") of the element.

ACAPI_Element_Get only retrieves some of the element data because the overheads for loading all the information could be significant (if you don't need it). You need to look elsewhere to retrieve the rest. For example, to retrieve the name of an object you could use the object index (libInd) from the API_ObjectType data with ACAPI_LibPart_Get.

[Anonymous]

Thank you, Ralph.

Chuck

[Anonymous]

What about the structural information?

Wall/Beam/Column...
Structure: Concrete Structural
...

thanks in advance, Chuck

[Ralph Wessel]

csh wrote:
What about the structural information?
Wall/Beam/Column...
Structure: Concrete Structural

That's a bit messier, but same idea. Essentially you are looking for the Fill type defined for the wall/column/etc. For a wall, you would use the 'fillInd' value from the API_WallType data. This is an index to the fill attribute. However, you need to first look a the index sign - negative means a composite and positive means a plain fill. Use ACAPI_Attribute_Get to retrieve the attribute data (including the name).

[Anonymous]

Huh, I was going to go there, but resisted because I didn't think that Graphisoft would mix metaphors: in other words, I thought they'd keep fill (a graphical representation) and the actual material separate.

Thanks again, Ralph.

[Akos Somorjai]

csh wrote:
Huh, I was going to go there, but resisted because I didn't think that Graphisoft would mix metaphors: in other words, I thought they'd keep fill (a graphical representation) and the actual material separate.

The fillInd determines the 2D representation on floor plan drawings, and also the structural information (composite fills). The tendency is to assign real 3D meaning to these 'skins', so that you could use them for calculations, for example.
The material indexes (e.g. topMat, botMat for a beam) determine only the 3D representation at the moment.

Akos