I am trying to create a case for using dynamo at my firm. Does anyone have or know where to find statistics on the percentage increase in productivity due to the use of dynamo.
You need to think of the tasks that you may use it for and the normal way they are done with the associated times.
Then compare it to the dynamo script doing the task.
Simple one creating drawing sheets and renaming/numbering them accordingly and making correct sheet size appear on each.
Lets say it takes 5 minutes to do this manually per sheet, so if you try doing this for 1000 sheets that will be 5000minutes which is about 83 hours.
Take you a few hours to create your own script then 10 minutes to generate all them sheets.
Video of this in action: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/learn-explore/caas/screencast/Main/Details/b35f97f3-0df4-4077-81bb-38e08cda584c.html
I have all ready identified possible uses, but I was just looking for general like we had a 5% increase in productivity due to the time saved using dynamo.
There are hundreds of tasks that we could identify, so I would need to determine this for each task. I would just like a genralization of people whos firms have used dynamo to automate the process.
Hi…whats your current setup? Are you multi-discipline company? Why i asked is because its actually dynamo for me is not for multi-discipline (i can hear the comments now coming…). Think this way dynamo is very good when you starting a project and setting it up like create sheets from excel, views, pdf plotting and all those good stuff. But once the project gets under way you do not want people messing around models and start running graphs that could easily change stuff. So my point is dynamo is not for everyone in the food chain. There is a higher level of responsibilty or authority if you want to implement dynamo to your firm. I think its only one or two person should be allowed to work on graphs, test and implement up to maybe the lead discipline. I have done a lot of test and experience that revit models fatal errors and unresposive by just running dynamo scripts to it. You do not want that to happen to your projects right? So for me as an advice use dynamo wisely…as spiderman says “with great power lies great responsibility”…anyways its only my opinion…
Single discipline but about 75 revit users. The scripts that would be run are renumbering views on sheets. Renumbering doors when the design changes and the room numbers change, etc. Just simple tasks that can be done quicker by using Dynamo.
I have all ready written one that will automate our life safety plans, which will be rolled out in a few months for testing with our new template.
It would only be me and our BIM lead that are even capable of doing it. Some of them would need to be accessed by any user and others by only a select few.
I am just trying to determine if this is something we want to invest the time in now to save time in the future. The firm is on a kick to work smarter not harder and this is one way of doing so.
Sounds good…it looks like your setup is inline with i said above. Dynamo could save a lot of time on clerical stuff like you specified and many more. Goodluck.
@dpohlman I’m not entirely certain you can really put a number to your question… and if you could, it would be highly circumstantial. I was faced with a similar situation not too long ago at my company, as engineers and business men, we love numbers. Although there isn’t a universal magic number that represents increase productivity due to Dynamo, you can make your own number with some simple logic… create a list of tasks you think Dynamo can do, such as tagging, naming pages, setting up sheets etc. put a rough number to it in hours per project each task takes… take a guess, its not rocket science, obviously it changes per project but you get the point. Then simply multiply that hour average amount per task Dynamo is performing by the number of jobs your firm puts out the door in a year, and there ya have it. a rough estimate of hours saved per year. multiply that by the average hourly wage at your company for production staff and now you have a dollar amount to speak to. Nothing will strike managements attention more than a dollar sign with a few 0’s.
The business case is even easier than that. They should actually be looking to hire someone with experience and a skill set that applies to your firm’s type of work to do this type of work exclusively.
Assume 2 minutes saved per sheet (I’m being conservative and feel the previously given 5 minutes indicates a need for Revit training not a need for Dynamo)
Assume last year your firm issued had 5000 sheets (again that’s conservative as to only 66 sheets per person per project).
5000*2=2000 minutes/60=166 hours.
The script would have taken an experienced user 1 hour to code so 165 hours.
Assume your average production billing rate is $150.
You spent an extra $25,000 worth of fee last year based on only one script.
Now imagine that user working on this 10 hours a week, finding and providing a script for one of those efficiency gains every two weeks and providing production efforts in the other 30 hours a week half. $25,000 * 26 = why are we even having this conversation? Put a help wanted sign out front pronto! That or make someone that person.
Obviously you will have to adjust the math and tailor the argument for your firm. But yeah not getting on this boat now is going to make you go bankrupt 10 years from now or increase overhead as you will have to spend on plugins or consultants.
This is exactly what I was looking for. Most likely I will be writing the scripts because I have much more knowledge of it than our BIM specialist.
Thank you for your input
That last point in @jacob.small’s post… the amount of potential money that could be saved on plugins alone is enough to almost create a new position. I’ve been coding Dynamo for about a month now and eliminated 3 Plugs-ins we used to use. Something to the tune of a 500 hundred dollars per machine per year each. And at a firm with hundreds of engineer all running Revit and its plug-ins, that amount saved adds up pretty quick
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@dpohlman Hi Denis
How did it go with the dynamo integration at your firm?
I’m working on my bachelor dissertation report, I am writing about how visual programming and computational design could influence the way how small and mid-size companies work. If it would be beneficial to them to adapt to these methods.
I would love to hear your story. It would be a great help to me!
Thanks in advance!
Bence