Another Balloon Tip Implementation

Alexander Ignatovich, or Игнатович Александр, responds to the recent discussion on using balloon tips in Revit and says:

I want to share another solution for balloon tips for custom messages, without using the unsupported AdWindows library.

Just see the project attached in YetAnotherBalloonTip.zip :-)

Alexander’s solution provides three different sample commands:

• Simple balloon
• Warning balloon
• Balloon from another thread

The implementation is packaged in a separate self-contained class named NotifyBox, so instantiating a simple balloon tip is really very simple indeed, in one single constructor call:

using Autodesk.Revit.Attributes;
using Autodesk.Revit.DB;
using Autodesk.Revit.UI;
using IVC.NotifyBox.Controls;
using IVC.NotifyBox.ViewModel.Enums;
 
namespace YetAnotherBaloons
{
  [Transaction( TransactionMode.Manual )]
  public class StartSimpleBaloonCommand : IExternalCommand
  {
    public Result Execute(
      ExternalCommandData commandData,
      ref string message,
      ElementSet elements )
    {
      NotifyBox.Show( "Hello", "Hello from "
        + "Investicionnaya Venchurnaya Companiya ;-)",
        NotificationDuration.Short );
 
      return Result.Succeeded;
    }
  }
}

An argument enables you to specify the duration.

The resulting balloon tip looks like this, and fades away after a moment:

Another argument allows you to specify an icon, e.g. to implement a warning balloon tip:

  public class StartWarningBaloonCommand : IExternalCommand
  {
    public Result Execute(
      ExternalCommandData commandData,
      ref string message,
      ElementSet elements )
    {
      NotifyBox.Show( "Warning",
        "Warning! Something is not perfect :)",
        NotificationIcon.Warning,
        NotificationDuration.Medium );
 
      return Result.Succeeded;
    }
  }

The resulting balloon tip includes an icon:

Since the balloon tip class is completely independent of Revit, it can obviously be called from a different thread as well:

  public class StartBaloonFromAnotherThreadCommand : IExternalCommand
  {
    public Result Execute(
      ExternalCommandData commandData,
      ref string message,
      ElementSet elements )
    {
      System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Factory.StartNew( () =>
      {
        Thread.Sleep( TimeSpan.FromSeconds( 3 ) );
 
        NotifyBox.Show( "Warning",
          "This message is from another thread!",
          NotificationIcon.Warning,
          NotificationDuration.Medium );
      } );
 
      return Result.Succeeded;
    }
  }

Many thanks to Alexander for sharing this!