Beta Tools

Beta Tools are tools that are supposed to be either in early testing phases, or existing tools with some proposed changes that need testing before they can be officially published. In order to quickly add Beta Tools to the HOK Beta tab on a Revit ribbon, there are a few utilities that were created, and a quite specific workflow.

Beta Tools Manager

This is a tool that presents a UI to the user, and allows them to pick which beta tools they want to install. The solution for this tool can be found here: Solution

• The way that Beta Tools Manager aggregates plugins that will be available is via checking contents of the sysvol folder. \\group\sysvol\group.hok.com\HOK\Tools\Revit
• Files are organized by Revit version first (2017, 2018 etc.), then inside of the Temp folder by their name.
• Please create a new folder for each plugin, and place all dependencies in there.
• Please also create (even if its not used) an Addin Manifest (*.addin). We need a manifest file, because the Beta Tools Manager scans the file path inside of the manifest that points it at the proper DLL to load into Revit. So basically a manifest file is a pointer at the DLL and where its located.
• There is also a Temp.dll file located in that folder. Let's keep it there. Because Revit locks DLLs that are loaded into its context, what Beta Tools Manager does, is points or new beta tools to this temp dll when they are loaded into Revit. That allows the other (actual) dlls to remain unlocked, and if there is an update we can swap them out, and then re-point the buttons to proper dlls.