Deleting a Custom Node

Packages
1

I just started creating my first custom nodes today, and in true newbie fashion managed to make a few mistakes along the way. Is there a way to delete a custom node from the library that you no longer want? I could not find one, and in my ignorance created another one with the same name, thinking it might overwrite the first one, but ended up with two nodes with the same name. I then deleted all of the nodes within the “bad” version, which also did not remove it. I tried saving the “bad” version, but did not get another DYF file in my definitions folder. Eventually, Dynamo crashed, and when I reopened it (I had to close and restart Revit to get the Dynamo window to appear), the “bad” version was not there. So by dumb luck I achieved my goal, but I have to believe there is a better way to do so than what I did.

I also could not find a way to change the name of a custom node in the Dynamo interface; if I choose Edit Custom Node Properties from the right-click context menu when the custom node is current, I can edit the Description and Category, but not the name. I often second-guess the name I initially assign, and expect that I will want to rename a custom node from time to time. I am guessing that I could use the File > Save As menu choice, but then I would have to be able to delete the original node. If I were to close Dynamo and then delete the DYF file in Windows Explorer, would that “safely” delete the incorrectly named custom node, or would doing that cause problems the next time I open Dynamo, and it looks for a file that is no longer there?

2

David, you already found out how to delete a custom node. Go to C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Dynamo.7\definitions and delete the *.dyf files you no longer want. Next time you start Dynamo, they will no longer show up in the node library as Dynamo basically just scans that directory (and the packages directory) to build the library on launch. There is no way to delete a custom node directly inside Dynamo (other than uninstalling packages you downloaded from the package manager).

If you want to rename a node, you need to go to your definitions folder, rename the respective *.dyf files, restart dynamo, go into each renamed node and save it.
Generally, you should stay clear of the Save As command when it comes to custom nodes as they will be saved with a new GUID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globally_unique_identifier). As far as I understand it, that means that any previous workflows that were using your original custom node will not identify your “saved as” version as that same node because of the different GUID - or in other words: this might break stuff.
This information should probably be on the wiki, so if anybody from the developer team reads this: maybe you can find a suitable place for this…