Dynamo: Export Views and Sheets from Revit - Part 6

First post in this series [Part 1]
Previous post in this series [Part 5]

We now have all of the user input needed to create the export, and we have taken the user-specified ViewSheetSet and generated a list of the View and Sheet objects included in the ViewSheetSet and a corresponding list of names to be used for the exported Views and Sheets. All that remains is to do the actual export. The Python Script 2 node in the Export to DWG group does the export.

There are six inputs to this node:

• IN[0]: This input takes the folder the user specified as the destination for the exported drawing files (see Part 1).
• IN[1]: The recombined list of Views and Sheets is sent to this input (see Parts 2 and 3).
• IN[2]: This input receives the list of generated file names for the exported Views and Sheets (see Part 4).
• IN[3]: The name of the DWG Export Setup to be used is sent to this input (see Part 5).
• IN[4]: The user choice of whether to merge the Views on a Sheet into one drawing file (true) or not (false) is received by this input (see Part 5).
• IN[5]: The user choice of whether to actually export the Views/Sheets (true) or to just run the graph without exporting (false) is sent to this input (see Part 5).

The image below shows the Python code that processes this input. The majority of this code was written by Konrad K Sobon, and posted to this thread in the DynamoBIM forum. It also includes the ability to have exported Sheets to have the Views on the Sheet merged into the View drawing file, rather than exported as separate drawing files that are then externally referenced by the Sheet drawing file. This addition was posted to the DynamoBIM forum by 4bimfercesp in this thread. The ability to specify the name of an existing DWG Export Setup comes from code posted by Andrea_Ghensi in the same thread in which Mr. Sobon posted his code. As I read through the postings and assembled the code shown below, I added some additional comments to solidify my understanding of what the code is doing.

If there are no errors generated in the course of performing the requested export, the Python Script 2 node outputs a string, Success!. This is displayed in the Watch node to the right of the Python Script 2 node. If there is at least one error, then the error report is the output, and is displayed in Watch node to aid in sorting out what went wrong. If the user input in the Group 5 area is false, indicating that the export is not to be done, then the output is a reminder to set the Ready to Export Views and/or Sheets - Boolean node to true to perform an export.

If you need to export the same Views and/or Sheets multiple times as a project makes its way through the design and documentation process, this graph can be a time saver while improving consistency. Customize a copy of it for each project, and use Dynamo Player to be a few clicks away from a new set of export files at any given moment.