Dynamo Milestone - 10 Year Anniversary of v1.0.0

[john_pierson]

Dynamo turns 10 soon!

(Based on v1.0.0 which came out April 29th 2016, so technically an anniversary of that milestone, but birthday sounds cooler and you get to have cake, so deal with it (⌐■_■)).

So crazy to think about, not only is Dynamo 10 years older, so are we.

Proof

Dynamo 1.0.0 Release - Dynamo BIM

1.0.0 was a big deal at the time - not just as a version number, but because it showed real investment in Dynamo’s future. This is also when Dynamo moved from the add-ins tab to the manage tab!

My first “real” exploration in Dynamo was updating Arrowheads for all TextNoteTypes in our Revit template.

However, my first time I got stuck and turned to the forum was when it came to overriding Keynotes based on source. This was something that you just could not do any other way at the time, and I wanted to use Dynamo for it.

Here is that original post: Override Projection Lines Color

Spoiler, I ended up figuring it out and it was the reason I managed to get buy-in from my manager to pursue Dynamo further.

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Now, you might be wondering..

Where are you going with this John?

The ask, (if you are willing to share) is to provide your response to any (or all) of the following questions.

• When did you first hear about Dynamo?
• What was the first thing you tried in Dynamo?
• What’s your best “Dynamo saved me” moment you’ve had - where automation spared your evenings and gave you your weekend back. And most importantly what did you do with the free time instead?
• How has Dynamo redefined the way you think about work?

Note: the plan for these quotes would be to include them in some sort of social media for Dynamo’s big milestone (10 years since 1.0 came out!), so be sure this is something you are fine sharing.

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Disclaimer: Anything shared in this thread may be used in a social post celebrating Dynamo’s 10th birthday (based on 1.0.0 release). By participating, you’re giving us the green light to feature your response publicly. If you’d prefer your reply stay private, just say so and we’ll keep it off the feed.

[patrick.ericson]

@john_pierson

• When did you first hear about Dynamo?
• What was the first thing you tried in Dynamo?
• What’s your best “Dynamo saved me” moment you’ve had - where automation spared your evenings and gave you your weekend back. And most importantly what did you do with the free time instead?
• How has Dynamo redefined the way you think about work?

• The first time I heard about Dynamo was when it came for Civil 3D in my installation for Civil 3D 2021 and it seemed so nice and great to be able to create functions by my self.
• Not very sure but at the summer vacation 2021, when the rest of the family went to sleep and we where staying at my mother and father in law’s cabin in northern Sweden, I was able to start playing around and learn D4C3D. Remember that when I came back in beginning of august I had created a script that could add stakeout and information for Traffic signs in a dwg which was very nice. This was probably not my first script, probably I created a circle inserted at 0,0,0 with a radius of 10m
• Every day with Dynamo is my best “Dynamo saved me” moment when I see a success from a colleague. The most interesting success where in a large pipe network project where we used Dynamo to read and write information between pipes and structures and and property sets and when we create plenty of piles for foundation under roads using excel and dynamo. The excel is the input for recipe for the piles, their pattern and pay item and then we export solids, circles and coordinates to seperate files for model coordination, drawings, quantification and for stake out
• That there is a easy way to create a function

[Nick_Boyts]

10 years… wow. Never thought Dynamo anniversaries would be the thing to make me feel old. I remember telling people we were “upgrading to version 1.0” and getting funny looks. The move away from the yellow nodes alone was enough to make v1.0.0 feel like real progress.

@john_pierson

When did you first hear about Dynamo?

I think it was 2014, Dynamo 0.6.3. It blew my mind - being able to automate new workflows without having to dig through the API.

@john_pierson

What was the first thing you tried in Dynamo?

This was back when I still did structural design and drafting. I started out with some basic geometry work, dynamic family selection, and mass sheet updates.

@john_pierson

What’s your best “Dynamo saved me” moment you’ve had - where automation spared your evenings and gave you your weekend back. And most importantly what did you do with the free time instead?

I used to have to create structural roof objects (Floor category) to align with and support the architectural roof (Roof category). I couldn’t just copy the linked element since it was a different category, so it was all manual work. For basic roofs this wasn’t a big deal, but for complex geometry and projects that were constantly in flux, it was a huge undertaking. My first “big” Dynamo graph was a workflow that identified linked Roof elements, created Floor elements at the same elevation with the same perimeter curves, and then added floor points to match the slope and geometry of the modeled roof. It ended up simplifying a task that typically took the span of a week for complex projects and shortened it to maybe an hour with manual cleanup.

@john_pierson

How has Dynamo redefined the way you think about work?

I’ve always said the best thing about visual programming is the way it forces you to think logically and computationally. You have to define requirements and expectations in order to automate valid outcomes. It forces you to understand relationships and build better standards. It changes the way you think about problems and solutions.

[Marcel_Rijsmus]

Zach Kron was my first intro, i liked the haloween pumpkins

[Alien]

• When did you first hear about Dynamo?
  October 2016. I know this because the date is stamped on a recording of an event I went to:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqIh0O4qTyg

  Halfway through, a friend sitting next to me leaned over and whispered,
  “What are they going on about?”

  I replied, “shhhhhh!”

  I was transfixed.

• What was the first thing you tried in Dynamo?
  I was the project architect for a physics research lab with huge lasers. The building had an absurd amount of M&E, something like 10+ plant rooms for one building.

  We had pages and pages of Excel spreadsheets with equipment data that all needed to end up inside the Revit model.

  So I spent a couple of days making a Dynamo graph with the help of my good friend who was my tech at the time (hi @MHaworthAEW ) to populate our Revit model.
  In reality he probably did most of the work while I asked annoying questions.

  Looking back, the graph was… not elegant.
  But it worked, and it saved us at least a week of mind-numbing manual input.

• What’s your best “Dynamo saved me” moment you’ve had - where automation spared your evenings and gave you your weekend back. And most importantly what did you do with the free time instead?
  There are too many to count.

  Whenever something repetitive appears, the thought process now is basically:
  “This is boring… let’s have fun and automate it instead.”

  Any free time gained is usually spent on the Dynamo forum, which says quite a lot about how exciting my life is.

• How has Dynamo redefined the way you think about work?
  If a task is repetitive, tedious, or makes you question your life choices…
  …there’s probably a Dynamo graph waiting to be written.

[Marcel_Rijsmus]

I remember a project in 11 parts where we had a script shared that made all drawings have the same scope boxes .and viewtemplates

That made the archive uncluttered and logical.

Mall of the Nertherlands project.

[dannyjones3355]

@john_pierson dude that’s nuts where does time go?! I will say it’s really cool to see how the community has changed and grown over the years. even your career arc and how you’ve ended up in the seat youre in. been an awesome 11+ years for me.

• Must have been fall of 2014, I’m basing this off of saved dyn files.
• I would say it was probably a basic set parameter command, the first production graphs used were for life safety annotation, before Revit could use calculated values in tags.
• More time with my significant other on Friday afternoons!!! She was on a very large 5+ building project and had to PDF all sheets, from all buildings, every Friday. Party was able to start quite a bit earlier thanks to monsieur dynamo.
• I would say it changes things to the core. No one want’s to do the same thing over and over. Or sometimes deal with the convoluted process that Revit might require to achieve a certain task, Dynamo enables us to rethink, how to get the most out of the really abysmal fees that we sometimes have to accept.

[Ewan_Opie]

When did you first hear about Dynamo?

The first whispering of Dynamo that I experienced was at the start of 2016. Someone at an industry networking event mentioned a parametric cow, by the hand of Zach Kron, was something clever I should look at and my interest in Dynamo peaked quite quickly after taking a look.

What was the first thing you tried in Dynamo?

The memory fog of the past is thick, but trawling back into my activity I can see the first forum supported workflow was me asking questions about persisting and retrieving information from Revit projects, and that the first member of the community to help was Andreas_Dieckmann. I believe that this led onto the automation to validate construction methodology for several kilometres of state highway seawall that was to be installed in New Zealand after a major earthquake raised the seabed by 8 meters, destroying the old infrastructure. Dynamo did the heavy lifting for interpreting design set out and population of multiple custom Adaptive Revit families into the project model.

What’s your best “Dynamo saved me” moment you’ve had - where automation spared your evenings and gave you your weekend back. And most importantly what did you do with the free time instead?

Dynamo has saved me so much time over the years, its very hard to pin down one example. There was a particularly complex facade as part of a convention centre that needed structural support trusses to be modeled to support it. These trusses were designed and scheduled in a way that provided the necessary data to create template parametric families for placement in Revit. The complexity came when interpreting the modeled geometry of the facade that these trusses were to support. The modelling was performed in some other obscure software and translated into Revit where it made complete sense to me to extract and interpret the geometry using Dynamo. By incorporating a user interface for truss placement, Dynamo was able to get the geometry, extract the constraints, read the required template data, apply this to custom Revit families and create content accurately in the model. Lots of time saved, and with that ‘free time’ saved I remember building a combined graph library for distribution across our multiple offices to improve repetitive task efficiency. Bit of a win-win!

How has Dynamo redefined the way you think about work?

Dynamo became my wing-man for many years across many projects and applications. By using it to design my own tools and tools for others, I have developed a solution based mindset. This means when my team or industry peers come to me for advice, they are as confident as I am that there will be a way to provide the solution to their issue. Dynamo helped me to visualize processes, figure out data structures easily and understand the interconnection of data for the benefit of project efficiency and outcomes. It is now my default sandbox for testing thoughts on how to code neat stuff in an intuitive way.

Looking forward to the next 10 team

[Andrew_Hannell]

Happy Birthday Dynamo

I thought I was a little late to the party- but from the dates of V1.0.0 and my blog post below, turns out I was too early…

Dynamo: Notes from a Novice

[Andrew_Hannell]

@Vikram_Subbaiah was the first person to get me really started on Dynamo- thanks for the help back then…

[MHaworthAEW]

@john_pierson

• When did you first hear about Dynamo?

I’d been a pretty avid viewer of Autodesk University from around 2010/11ish - And remember around Dec ‘15 looking at some of the Dynamo classes that Marcello had presented and getting the Dynamo build installed. That was 0.9 (certainly it was after the nodes had gone from Mustard to Grey)

@john_pierson

• What was the first thing you tried in Dynamo?

In Feb 2016 We got this last min opportunity for a bid to create a new station building @ Kidderminster, and within my team, there where 4 proposals from the Senior guys - and i was tasked with modelling them up that afternoon ready for submission of the chosen option a couple of days later.
One of the ideas (option 1) was a curved roof with tapered beams supporting the roof. So, I took to Dynamo that evening and worked out how to get the curve of the underside of the roof at the intersection with a grid line (thanks to one of Marcelllo’s class handouts)

@john_pierson

• What’s your best “Dynamo saved me” moment you’ve had - where automation spared your evenings and gave you your weekend back. And most importantly what did you do with the free time instead?

A number of years ago I was working on a Student Resi scheme. a number of separate blocks in different models. But they shared common groups for the bedroom/kitchen layouts.
I’d written half a dozen scripts that could be run to number all the rooms, doors and windows across each of the blocks.
The scripts had initially been written just to save me or someone on the team having to slog through all 20 blocks and number every thing manually. But the big life saving moments came as things like the bedroom groups where updated (multiple times) by someone in one of the blocks, then saving the group out and loading into the other blocks. Which would result in the room/door numbers all resetting to default. So having the scripts meant when we discovered things had been reset just before we where due to issue everything out, we could run the scripts in 5 mins and get it all back to how it’d been.

@john_pierson

• How has Dynamo redefined the way you think about work?

When I started working with @Alien about a year after first trying dynamo and we’d been to the talk they mentioned - Dynamo made what they wanted possible in many of the things that simply wouldn’t have been practical long hand. So many times I’d be sat with @Alien who would go “can we do X?” and I’d go “leave it with me” and spent many a evening upskilling on dynamo to achieve what they needed for the next day. Even if the thing sounded simple - like “can we report the ceiling heights in the room data?”

[Aaron_Maller]

@john_pierson

• When did you first hear about Dynamo?

I was still at Beck Group (pre-Parallax) when i first heard about it. 2014 or 2015 (0.x, Orange nodes, etc). At the time, i took one look at it, and didnt have much (any) support about how to learn or figure it out. So i gave it a “well that’s interesting,” and turned the page.

After starting Parallax Team (2015) Dynamo was starting to get more traction, amongst the user base. I still didnt know how it worked. At the same time, i was (and still am) responsible for Enterprise Deployment, so Dynamo was going to be a “head scratcher” for me, once i saw how Packages had to be handled.

John P and i were trading emails about this, that, and the other, and he asked me why i didn’t use Dynamo, when i was so active in the rest of the Revit Community helping folks with other things. I told him that id love to, but i had no idea how that freakin’ thing worked, lol. As we talked about stuff, he ended up teaching me about dynamo, through some practical use cases where i asked him for help making things in Dynamo because i could see the value-add to the projects we were working on, but i had no idea where to start on my own.

@john_pierson

• What was the first thing you tried in Dynamo?

Hilariously, copying the Area of Filled Regions in to a Parameter of the Filled Regions, since the Area of a FR cannot be scheduled. Such a small thing, BUT: It also taught me that what is really interesting about Dynamo is that it can do things “normal Revit” can’t do.

@john_pierson

• What’s your best “Dynamo saved me” moment you’ve had - where automation spared your evenings and gave you your weekend back. And most importantly what did you do with the free time instead?

There have been so many. But, i think i still have to say: Field Layout Coordinates, on the Arena (one of the graphs John P built).

We had been tasked with building a “Reconciliation Model” to help fix a project with a bunch of mediocre drawings, but once we had a NEW model built, all the penetration coordinates needed to get out to the folks in the field.

APL wasnt a thing yet (it was still GTP, or in the middle of acquisition, or something). Excitech sort of worked, but didnt do what we needed. So John rolled our own, for exporting Coordinates of ALL SORTS of Concrete. We still use it to this day. =)

@john_pierson

• How has Dynamo redefined the way you think about work?

I think (a lot) more about how computers and systems will organize data, now.

Level 1 versus Level 01. Orders of creation vs Manipulation. Taxonomy issues. Sorting independent lists creating junk data. Processing time versus Regeneration time.

And some funny thought traumas: SAVE BEFORE RUNNING. “I dont know which lacing it is, try all of them. Oh wait… that wasnt a good idea.” ITS A THINGIE. If its Yellow it didnt work. “Clicking it Anyway” is not a strategy. “No, you cant run it without the packages. Wait…”

And some real traumas: “Oh nuts, it needs a different version of this package.” “Oh nuts, its a different build of Dynamo, and something is different.” “Oh nuts, its a different version of Revit, and the world is on fire.”

But i wouldnt have it any other way.

[anuwat.ong]

I was first introduced to Dynamo through a workshop organized by the BIM Community in Thailand. I began by experimenting with simple Get–Set Parameter workflows, as I was also learning to use the Conceptual Mass environment at the time.

Later, during the pandemic, our team received a very large project that required extensive model and data management. Since travel and many outside activities were limited, I spent a significant amount of time developing Dynamo graphs. I also packaged many of them into Dynamo Player scripts with simple UI, which were later shared with my team to use in Revit 2020.

Most of these tools focused on automating documentation workflows. As a result, they greatly improved both the efficiency and speed of our production process.

As a Technical Designer, Dynamo has significantly changed the way I deliver my work. The process now requires more systematic planning and a more structured approach to managing tasks and data.

[Robert_Younger]

When did you first hear about Dynamo?
My coworker clicked the button in Revit and asked me if he broke the program as the Dynamo client opened up on screen over the Revit client. I later looked up what it actually was.

What was the first thing you tried in Dynamo?
A script that took csv/rtf file exports from different energy models, grabbed the air/space load data from the results, and pushed it into the model for storage/display. It made for a fast visualization method to confirm the room definitions didn’t have crazy errors like a building’s worth of lighting stuffed in a single room.

What’s your best “Dynamo saved me” moment you’ve had - where automation spared your evenings and gave you your weekend back. And most importantly what did you do with the free time instead?
Plan/sheet generation for a 500 page project with unit plans, scope boxes, phasing, and multiple floors. The person who normally handled project setup/standards enforcement was not trained on Revit yet, so I had to pick up the sheet creation, view alignments, templating, etc.. a carefully planned Dynamo script wound up saving several hours of hitting Apply Template and using Guide Grids across multiple pages.

How has Dynamo redefined the way you think about work?
You can get a lot of grunt work done during a coffee break.