Dynamo 2.1 Release Notes Questions

Historically usage spikes for products in a fairly cyclical nature, with a corresponding drop in older versions at the same point. This shouldn’t be news to anyone so I’m not divulging any secrets here, but new releases are one such point (though we’re still a few months away from any real spike for 2020 - I just got my download today). As old work finishes, new work is typically started in the new version. And obviously upgrades can be performed periodically along a project’s life cycle. I’ve seen my share of big projects, but have yet to see one which didn’t have a few days to spare for a Revit upgrade over a 3 year period (that’s about 700 working days during which it could be scheduled).

That said, I willingly admit that this isn’t the case for all offices (I know some who still refuse to upgrade past 2015). But when discussing ‘hypothetical policies’ such as this, I’m almost always on the side of most current software. If you have 2017 in heavy rotation then certainly, develop in 2017, test in 18, 19, and 20. Same goes for 16, but know that you’ll have a 1.x to 2.x conversion to deal with (so two libraries - one for 2016 and one for everything else), and that Autodesk Support only has a 3 version look back period.

Yep! I fixed it now. My bad. lol

2 Likes

Graph was created in Revit 2020 + Dynamo 2.1.0
Then opened in Revit 2017 + Dynamo 2.0.2

The only issue I had noticed was that nodes that have dropdowns have their selected index wiped out and return to original status. In my case, that was the categories node. But that is an easy fix if you use Category.ByName instead. :grin: This would require some consideration for other dropdown nodes as well I imagine.

1 Like

Category.ByName(“stuff”); is one of my favourite DesignScript snippets!

I typically use it as below - this hard locks down the graph so that unintentional changes don’t render it unusable :slight_smile:

9 Likes

Is there a similar option for All Elements of Type as I’ve seen issues with element types (in my case area schemes) getting changed… I seem to recall though that there was no Design Script option for this but hoping that might have changed…

1 Like

Yes. Clockwork recently added an ElementType.ByName node just for this reason.

7 Likes

After going through this discussion, release notes (2.1 and 2.2), dynamo blog about 2.1, I have given up trying to understand what’s going on :smile:
But I still want to understand two things in particular:

1. Autocompletion inside python nodes in Dynamo
Up till now to get intellisense we had to use IronPython Stubs, through an external editor, which has been discussed several times on this forum (here)
Few questions on the autocomplete feature in the newer version of dynamo:
A. What all does the autocomplete work for? Revit API, Dynamo API, DesginScript Libraries, Custom package Libraries, Python standard libraries, python custom libraries. It would be great if someone could put yes or no for each of those.
B. DesignScript had some namespace conflict issues and some issues where autocomplete didn’t work inside functions; do these issues carry over to the python autocomplete feature?

2. How and when do I get these features?
Going through the 2.1 Release blog post, in the Revit Integration section, it says that Dynamo will be shipped with Revit and users won’t be able to change the version. Since our firm generally upgrades every odd year and I’m currently using Revit 2017,18,19 for projects which wouldn’t upgrade, does this mean that I would have to wait till 2021 to start using these features? I would want to be able to use some of these features now because dynamo + python + autocomplete would be so awesome :scream_cat:

Since a lot of us here are not software engineers could someone help me make a flowchart of these things with Revit version, dynamo version, major features, if-this-use this etc. that could possibly end up on the blog (after all this is a forum of Dynamo which is a visual environment :stuck_out_tongue:)

Excited about the upgrades. Autocompletion Yay!

1 Like

That’s what I’m seeing too. I want to upgrade DynamoRevit (the integrated one) to version 2.1 for Revit 2017, 2018 & 2019 - but not seeing a way (unless you use an older unstable version of 2.1)

This statement has some validity if you are just looking at design production, but look at the lifecycle of a project. The design team is not the only ones that are using the models. The contractor has to build that large project and that is likely going to take a few more years, and the contractor is probably going to be averse to “changing” the original design models for fear of “changing” any information contained in the original docs.

FWIW - I’ve been working for the last 18 months on the contractor/fabrication/erector side of a large stadium project, 8Gb model in Revit 2017.

You can’t. The 2.1 update is included in Revit point releases for Revit 2020 and beyond. Highest stable release version that 2017-2019 currently supports is 2.0.2. In the above thread, I did confirm compatibility with 2.1.0 graphs though.

So as of right now, you can definitely have shared Dynamo graph support for 2017 - 2020.

3 Likes

Thanks for getting back soon with that information. This leads to another question though:

In Dynamo 2.0.2 the drop-down nodes reset their selected items when opened in different Revit versions (i.e. opening the same graph in Revit 2017, then 2019). I understand one solution is to switch to a category.byname node & specifically hard-code it with a String node. I dont want to have to go back to all of my graphs & and make the tweaks, but I also don’t want it resetting. From what I read on Github the 2.1 update fixed the issue for the drop-down.

Yeah 2.1 did in fact fix that issue. Unfortunately the workaround is to revise it as mentioned in the thread above.

Not great I know. :disappointed:

However, a process such as auditing your workflow between releases should be part of anyone’s typical upgrade expectation. When a new Revit release comes out, simply upgrading Revit files without reviewing is not wise, and I think it is now the same for Dynamo. I have been advising my clients to handle the Dynamo 2.x upgrade the same way.

2 Likes

Thank you again. My concern isn’t me or my department personally using the graphs. I am slowing rolling out Dynamo graphs to our MEP trades to work with & I have them using DynamoPlayer. My goal has been to make using the graphs with Player as seamless as possible while they use Revit. Part of this has meant creating as few inputs as possible for them & I just worry that tweaking the graphs again…or creating custom ones for different Revit versions will slow down our company’s internal adoption.

This of course, is an internal matter, not a Dynamo one…

Thanks again for the help!

1 Like

2.0.1 and 2.0.2 might cause some other issues.
see this link