Dear Dynamo Team,
This falls under the category of “wish list”
I am excited to re-start using Dynamo and I am now planning on introducing it to my students for the next academic cycle. In thinking through how I would introduce Dynamo to them and creating tutorials and learning material, I thought it would be a bewildering experience to have all the menus and sub-menus available to them from the very start. It is one thing that annoyed me with other systems (the vast amount of buttons and icons that they have to go through to find what they need). So, my question is: Is there any way you can give the user access to customise the menus to re-order them to fit the pedagogical approach they want to follow? And perhaps grey out methods and menu items that he/she does not want to use just yet? So, mainly a customisable GUI. Or perhaps an extensible GUI where I can create my own menus underneath the standard ones that include some, but not all the menu items and organised in any way I wish. Thanks again for all your efforts with Dynamo.
Hi Wassim,
Good feedback, thanks. I’m afraid that the menu, while extendable, is not very configurable right now. Custom nodes (wether you authored them or downloaded them) can be re-configured into their own categories, or moved into existing ones, an this might help for constructing a toolset for a particular class. You can also remove packages in the Packages>manage packages dialog.
Can you give an example of what you think one of these configurations would look like in an ideal situation, and what you would want to be accomplishing in that class?
Thanks
Z
Hi Zach,
Thanks for the prompt response. As an example, I might want to establish a set of menus dealing only with 2D related classes and point my students to them. Or if I am doing a class on creating a diagrid, I would then group all the needed nodes into a menu structure. So basically different menu structures for different classes at different levels of skills and interest. I think ‘extensible’ is the right word where perhaps the user does not mess with the menus above, but can create his/her own (duplicate and new custom nodes) menu hierarchy below the standard one. Think custom toolbar of frequently used menu items.
The organisation of the Core nodes seem to be defined by an XML file. Perhaps if there was an equivalent XML file for the Geometry nodes then this could be the starting point for such customisations? But also perhaps a visual drag and drop approach (much like a To Do list on an iPhone) where I can create my own menu structure would be fantastic.
This is a great feedback Wassim. From what I understand you are looking to ‘favourite’ some of the items from the existing library for each of your projects and you want to be able to share that group with your students. Makes a lot of sense, noted and we will work on this.
I think what Wassim is proposing here is a fantastic idea and I would just like to second it. In my Dynamo classes I have noticed that for beginners, the sheer multitude of available nodes can be quite overwhelming (especially for students that have absolutely no prior programming experience). A customizable XML file would be a great start for creating custom toolsets specific to the context of a topic-driven class.