This is the CompHound project main landing page.

CompHound is a cloud-based universal component and asset usage analysis, reporting, bill of materials, visualisation and navigation project providing sample code for two presentations on connecting the desktop with the cloud at RTC Europe in Budapest end of October and Autodesk University in Las Vegas in December.

It currently consists of two parts:

• CompHoundWeb, a Node.js web server, mongo database and Autodesk View and Data API viewer.
• CompHoundRvt, a Revit add-in to populate the CompHound web database with ±BIM family instances.

This project is based on and derived from the node.js mongodb web server for the FireRating in the Cloud sample, consisting of the FireRatingCloud C# .NET REST API client Revit add-in and the fireratingdb Node.js mongoDB web server.

In addition to that, this project also sports a user interface, including report, bill of material, Autodesk View and Data API 2D and 3D model analysis, viewing and navigation functionality.

You can try it out live and read the detailed articles describing the entire project implementation and evolution below.

You can explore this app up and running live.

Here is the mongolab-hosted database that we are using: mongolab.com/databases/comphound.

It contains the collection of component instances. The only occurrences that I exported so far are from the standard Revit sample file rst_advanced_sample_project.rvt. You can add more yourself by running the CompHoundRvt add-in in any other Revit BIM of your choice.

The node.js web server driving the database via mongoose is hosted on Heroku, and its URL is https://comphound.herokuapp.com.

Its REST API is accessible via the route /api/v1.

/api/v1/instances should in theory return all database entries, but it will fail with an application error due to too large data.

From version 0.0.25 onwards, the REST API route /api/v1/auth provides access to the View and Data API authorisation token.

However, you can use /api/v1/instances/:id to retrieve the JSON document for a single specific entry.

Finally, it sports the beginnings of a user interface that currently provides the following access points:

• / – say hello.
• /hello/:message – reply with the message passed in.
• /html/count – return the number of database entries.
• /www/instances1 – list all the database entries in a table – this can take a long time.
• /datatable2 – display a datatable navigation interface through the instance records.

In the long run, most of these access points can be shut down again.

Instead, one single main index entry point will display the datatable listing the component occurrences as well as provide access to the still missing reporting, viewing and model navigation functionality.

The following discussions by The 3D Web Coder and The Building Coder describe the entire project implementation and evolution:

• Project definition and christening
• First implementation based on fireratingdb and FireRatingCloud
• Steps towards a database table view
• The CompHound Mongoose DataTable
• CompHound Heroku Deployment
• Adding a React.js widget
• Rebuilding the database, enhanced upsert and C# REST client
• Implementing a component instance view using jQuery

Jeremy Tammik, The Building Coder and The 3D Web Coder, ADN Open, Autodesk Inc.

This sample is licensed under the terms of the MIT License. Please see the LICENSE file for full details.