I have not used Dynamo yet and am eager to learn it.
First on my wish list is to find a way to automatically link a nested family’s parameters to ones in the host family.
I am making cabinets and have many different doors styles. I make the door styles as individual families, then load them into a cabinet family. Each of the nested door style families has multiple types defined in them. These are NOT shared families. I don’t want to do that with these.
So in a base cabinet host, I will load multiple door styles (3-drawer, door & drawer, etc.), each of which has multiple types (Shaker style, flat, etc.). At the moment I have to open the properties of each type in each door style and manually link multiple parameters to the host (e.g. width, height, materials). It could mean linking 6 or 7 parameters for each type, and there are probably 30 types to link. Lots of clicking (and the grey link box feels like it’s only 1 pixel wide so precise clicking is required.)
Is there a simple way to have Dynamo make those links for me? Is Dynamo the right way to do this? I’d like to load a nested family, run a script and have the links created. It would save massive amounts of time.
What funny timing, this topic has come up twice for me today, lol. Here is a script to associate family parameters, and a user just provided a revision that can handle linking multiple elements parameters as well
I’d really appreciate if you’d test it out with your RFAs as I did not have issue with my use, but it seems another user is having issue with it here: Associate a list of family parameter in a family
Thanks so much. I will give it a try. I’ve never tried Dynamo so it may take a little time but I will dive in and try it on my families. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Silly question: do I write this in Python? Or does this happen in Dynamo?
Oh gosh my apologies, I replied so hastily I overlooked the part about this being your first Dynamo endeavor. This isn’t ideal for a first time use as I’ve found using Python nodes became easier with familiarity of Dynamo itself, but it is certainly still doable So yes, this workflow uses a Python script, which is run within Dynamo. You’ll find a node called “Python Script” in the OOTB Dynamo noes under Core > Scripting. Insert that node into your workspace, right click on it to hit “Edit”, and paste the script into the contents. Hit the plus sign alongside IN[0] on the Python script node to add the additional two inputs.
If you get stuck with this, post back with a screen capture (small camera icon on upper right in Dynamo) of what you’ve got set up, and I’m happy to help you work through it
PS. I highly suggest you read the Dynamo Primer in its entirety and do all of the exercises, as it is a great resource to familiarize yourself with the program and establish a good foundation of knowledge
As a guy who makes his living helping people out of self inflicted dynamo jambs and/or getting them up to speed via training, I wish you good luck and hope I won’t see any support ticks from you in the coming weeks.
I would instead advise you to run though the primer first. Download the data set first. Skip nothing. Do each exercise no matter how irrelevant it seems. None of them take that long and you’re gonna learn stuff in the right order instead of in a way where you can graph yourself into a corner causing costly rework.
Hi Jacob -
Thanks for the wise advice. I definitely intend to do the tutorials. I like to try to figure out real world examples along with them. I reach out for help only as a last resort (I’m a tough old New Englander - )
I am looking forward to this.
Chris
That’s actually the right idea. Scribble the ‘I could use this to _____” in a notebook as you go. I just wish I had kept mine organized… it’s like reading the scratches of a chicken being driven by a cafinated squirrel - there is no organizational structure, or even sentence structure… not even sure I kept to a single alphabet to be honest…
Do ask as many questions as you want though. Us tough old New Englanders at Autodesk need input from users like you to know where the tricky bits are!
So yes, this workflow uses a Python script, which is run within Dynamo. You’ll find a node called “Python Script” in the OOTB Dynamo noes under Core > Scripting. Insert that node into your workspace, right click on it to hit “Edit”, and paste the script into the contents. Hit the plus sign alongside IN[0] on the Python script node to add the additional two inputs.
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