Can Dynamo Help Me? (Revit User)

Revit
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Hello Revit/Dynamo community :slight_smile:

I am a long time user of Revit, but a first week user of Dynamo. I had always heard the buzz involving dynamo around the industry, but had never taken the time to dive into it. This past week was slow at my office, so I had some time I could dedicate to something. So I decided to try and learn of better ways to do Clash Detection. I then stumbled upon some people who were using Dynamo in order to place spheres at clash points, and then be able to schedule these clash points and use highlight in model for quickly finding the said clash. After a couple days of playing around with Dynamo/Navisworks/Excel/Revit, and getting help from the community (see here: Click Me and here: Click Me) I have finally got my script running, and will have saved my company 10’s of hours per Revit project when doing clash detection on current/future projects.

Now, Im looking for additional uses in which Dynamo can speed up tasks that are done on every project. After doing some research I havent found much that applies to my day-to-day/project-to-project routine. I’ve seen some people talk about creating sheets from Dynamo, but currently, we have a master sheet list schedule in Revit, and when creating a sheet, we can pull from that schedule to create the exact sheet we want), so not sure that would be too beneficial.

The only other thing I can see dynamo being used for would be the below;

Creating gridlines/levels from a linked revit model - If I can use Dynamo to automatically put gridlines/levels in place for me based off the architects linked model, this would save me loads of time on project startup

Our company is a Communications/Audio Visual/Security consulting company in which we design WiFi/AV/and security systems. We take the architects model, and model our equipment accordingly (these include but arent limited to: Projectors/Projector screens, speakers, wireless access points, intrusion detection, access control, CCTV cameras, etc). For this kind of work, I’m not to sure we can take full advantage of Dynamo, but then again I could be wrong/not looking in the right places.

Any additional tools/information/help on dynamo process that could speed up certain workflows would be a big help. The Clash Detection Workspace I had shown above has been incredible! Cannot believe how well it worked, would be nice to have other processes sped up via Dynamo, I’m just not sure how it can benefit me and my workflow.

If anyone needs any additional information from me, please let me know. I will answer ASAP :slight_smile: thanks for all your help

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@RAllan
I was on the same boat few months ago. I think most revit users beginners or expert will find dynamo very useful on a daily revit tasks and to automate project set ups. Most of this are already in this forum and already been answered. I think its up to you to find it. When i first started in the forum looking for answers to things i want to do i generally find it and also learn at the same time. My suggestion is to list things you want then search in the forum. You will be suprise what you will find out. FYI

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@RAllan

I would break the uses of Dynamo down into the following areas:

  • Importing data
  • Exporting data
  • Automating repetitive tasks
  • Optioneering (iterating through various rules/combinations)
  • model management & auditing
  • geometry creation
  • view/annotation creation & modification
  • model analysis (I’d include uses such as cash detection within this)
  • doing things that Revit should really do anyway i.e extending functionality

I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten something important, but it covers all I can think of right now.

I wrote this more than a year ago on my blog http://wp.me/p75vLU-3V & since then, I’ve discovered a few more uses.

Incidentally- on your post above, I would use the in-built copy monitor for grids- much better than making an independent copy of a grid. Copy monitor makes sure the grids (or levels) are consistent across models

2 Likes
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@4bimferdie.espiritu

Ya thats about that boat im in now (figuring out ways of speeding up processes). The thing is, I don’t even know where to begin with what processes Dynamo can speed up for me, or what to search for. Sort of made this thread to see how other users/companies were using the software in their day-to-day workflows to speed up repetitve tasks in hopes that it would get my wheels turning as to where I should focus on, and maybe some ideas of my own will pop out of it.

@Andrew_Hannell

I actually came across your blog prior, and had read through it all (was a good read). In terms of the breakdown in dynamo my company would focus on the following;

  • Automating repetitive tasks
  • view/annotation creation & modification
  • model analysis (Clash Detection tool I got working is brilliant, best thing since i dont even know!)
  • doing things that Revit should really do anyways

The thing is, I’m drawing blanks when it comes to which tasks I’d want automated vs the traditional way of doing it. Everything I can think of is already workflowed nicely through my Revit setup, and am struggling to see where I can speed up times else where.

For example:
Annotation creation - We have families with parameters that feed an annotation already. So whenever we place a family, we use the tag on placement function, and it automatically places our annotation with it. This annotation can now be moved around freely, and it will follow the family it is associated to whenever it is moved on any sheet. Not sure how Dynamo can speed up this process anymore for us (as an example).

This is why I was looking to the community for quick posts on how they use their Dynamo to speed up their processes, and maybe I can apply it to my day to day work flows.

P.S - thanks for the copy monitor suggestion, never thought of doing this before for some reason! Traditionally we have been creating our grids using the ‘pick a line’ function, which is where I thought Dynamo could come into play. But yea, no need with the copy monitor tool built into Revit.

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To find things that are worth automating, open the doors to the rest of the office. “Hey guys, what are the most mind numbingly dull aspects of our work which make you want to throw up every time you have to do them?”

One example I can think of for your specific field is tracking which room every piece of equipment is in, automatically. When the owner splits a room in two, and now you have to update all the mark for all the corresponding doors which your locks were on…

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@jacob.small

Normally, that may work in larger offices. But currently, I am the only Revit user working at mine. So I just have ideas I generate/ones I find around on the forums. Which is why i posed this question to the community. So far, these are the workspaces I have come up with:

Clash Detection Sphere (completed) - Places a scheduled sphere at all clash locations given from a .xml file
Element Automatic Section (in-progress) - automatically creates front and rear section of selected element(s)
Room Automatic Section (in-progress) - automatically creates section views of all walls within a selected room
3D Camera Perspective Views (in-progress) - automatically creates camera views of all selected cameras

Still trying to think up of more process to automate things I do by hand, but it seems that most things I think of are easy enough to do via revit/revit add-ins - which is why i was looking for opinions from the community in the first place.

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@RAllan
Did you have any luck with the 3D Camera Perspective View tool? This has been something that I started to try to work out.