Introducing Dynamo as a Service, powering Up Dynamo Player in Forma!


Are you a fan of dynamo :muscle: and Forma :star_struck: Do you want to build Dynamo graphs that no longer need any Dynamo install? :sunglasses: Do you want to seamlessly share them with your peers? :open_mouth:

We are incredibly excited to release the dynamo Beta for “Dynamo as a Service” (DaaS) that is directly coupled with Autodesk Forma today, and will expand into all your other favorite hosts in time!

This allows for a stronger authoring experience with Dynamo on the desktop, easy upload and sharing with others, the ability to graphs on the Dynamo Service requiring NO install or even understanding of Dynamo at all. Pretty huge if you ask me!

Currently in Beta (Meaning we still have work to do, and would love some feedback to help us hone it!), we’ll continue to work on Dynamo as a Service to ensure it’s more performant, secure and powerful for you. Come sign-up for the Beta, give it a spin and explore all the amazing new things you can do :star_struck:

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Does it have Package version awareness?

The install instructions in Forma are confusing, because it mentions version 2.0 for Revit 2025. And there is the DynamoFormaBeta 2.X Package, which is not compatible with Revit 2025. If the “DynamoFormaBeta” Package would be renamed to “DynamoFormaBeta 3.X” it would be more obvious.

And there is still a warning:

I’m using Revit 2025.3

And I have joined the beta, but does someone need to activate my account first?

it seems the pixel tower example doesn’t work with the latest version? I have tested the Watch3D as output workflow and this seems to work

there is a half transparent warning, that overlaps with the Dynamo Player in Forma:

I have added a height adjustment, because in Forma, if you import a terrain it will be not at 0m above sea level

CreatePixelTower_v2.dyn (257.8 KB)

Hi @Thomas3 - Thanks for jumping on this and testing so quickly! Some responses :slight_smile:

  1. Totally fair call on the Package Information, we’ll resolve that ASAP after AU week. Thanks for the catch! CC @havardh
  2. The warning is due to us publishing that package in a later version than what you are using, correct? I’m assuming as I don’t speak German :smiley: If so, we can publish in the lowest version that makes sense to resolve.
  3. Yes, we need to grant you Beta access. @Zach_Kron should have done that by now!
  4. I’ll take a look at the PixelTower example next week; it should be working but obviously is not!
  5. The transparent UI is an easy fix next week also - CC @havardh

Beyond the above, yes, in Forma you will get Geometry in that is set at the 0,0,0 point (Unless you specify a point) and so you will need to work through the actual terrain elevation above sea level yourself. The best way to do this (Which isn’t present in the Pixel Tower example) would be to pull the point from an existing location in Forma. Today that has to be a parcel, road or building with a derived point, but we want to make better “Put that building here on the terrain” nodes in time.

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The Service only works on Dynamo 3.0+, and has a specific version of Dynamo (Currently a 3.4 pre-release stable build). That version will adapt over time, and the Forma package should always be able to work in sync with it. We’ll keep them in sync, but if for whatever reason something is going wrong please do let us know!

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  1. The warning is due to us publishing that package in a later version than what you are using, correct? I’m assuming as I don’t speak German :smiley: If so, we can publish in the lowest version that makes sense to resolve.

The warning basically says, that the package was created for a newer version compared to what I use atm (maybe a newer Dynamo beta?). But I’m on the latest version that is available for Revit, so this is confusing for users, that are not used to such warnings. It is likely new users think that it is not working at all and Cancel the dialog instead of just continue

Hi Thomas.

Thank you for the detailed report ! :slight_smile:

Confusion of package version
I see that we have forgot to update the description for installation in the non-closed version of the extension. And the language made this pretty confusing. We have the forward looking ‘DynamoFormaBeta’ package with .net8 support which works on Dynamo 3.x, and then we added a ‘DynamoFormaBeta for 2.x’ package with .net48 support which works on Dynamo 2.18 and 2.19.

I’ve updated the installation descriptions now:

The warning when installing
I think the warning comes because @Aparajit_Pratap released this using the most recent development build of Dynamo. Maybe we can release from Dynamo 3.0 going forward? Or make this an configurable field in the Package Manager?

Access to closed beta
I’m going to send another wave of now :slight_smile: I think I see you on the list :+1:

Pixel tower
I see that we have miss out on updating the Pixel Tower and the Area calculation examples. So they are using nodes which where included in the package in DynamoFormaBeta@2.1.0. I have updated these now, and you should be able to download new versions which use the new nodes.

Height adjustments

We’ve got some nodes for this. You use the GetTerrain node to load the terrain element into Dynamo and then you can use Terrain.ElevationAt to query for the height on a given x and y location :slight_smile: This method should be performant that you can use it all over :slight_smile:

Again, thanks for the patients and detailed report, I’ll get to that invite and transparent UI right away :+1:

  • Håvard
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This is what I’m getting…

I really like the updates to the graph, they are quick and intuitive…



My curiosity is that it doesn’t appear to be ‘baked in’? is it correct that when i close dynamo it disapears? Or am I doing it wrong? :slight_smile: (I can break this off to a new topic if you would prefer)

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Looks like you need to use the “Add” button that shows up in Player. When you have geometry elements, you’ll see a preview, but you need to purposely “Add” the geometry to bake it to the project

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Nice…

I have managed to break it though…

Not sure how, same graph, it’s happy if it’s on ‘Desktop’

It doesn’t seem to be behaving exactly as I’d expect… I’d like to change the function but I don’t have an option?

It seems aware that it has floors, but they aren’t something I can push and pull around… No grab handles.

It also doesn’t like floors in circles (or nurbs)…

It is really cool though!

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Hi Mark :wave:

Cool that you broke it! :slight_smile: if you click on the warnings it should take you to the detailed view so that you can inspect what node broke. :slight_smile:

We are going to make these integrate with the Basic Buildings which will give you push pull. For now you would need to swing by the 3D Sketch tool to edit these. We had to descope this for the launch to ensure stability, but I got PRs open and approved for this :slight_smile:

You should be able to set the function id to either ‘residential’ or ‘commercial’ :slight_smile: that will drive the function breakdown in Forma.

You can expand the BuildingByClosedCurve node to look at how to use the Elements.System.Integrate and Representations to have more control over the geometry :slight_smile:

Håvard

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