Hi everybody,
We’ve been experimenting with a new library user interface and would love to get some feedback. You can download and install a special build of Dynamo to evaluate here.
Please note, this version of Dynamo will work by itself (stand-alone) or on top of Revit 2014 (not 2015 yet). Let us know what you think! (positive and negative feedback welcome)
Lilli
Autodesk User Experience
yeeah thumbnails, i like it 
next step are gifs in the detail window
I have enough space for a second row, maybe a good idea
the highlighted row like here…
…disappears when the mouse arrow is here:
what is this button for? documentation?
I like that we are starting to see some graphics being developed. I sure enjoy a decent icons as it makes easier to find things.
I like documentation and tool tips as well. It’s important to either have a good wiki for all nodes and how they work, what inputs they require etc.
What I don’t like is the fact that its looking like it will take up half of a computer screen. Please, that side bar is getting bigger and bigger.
Well that certainly brings up the visual part in visual programing 
It looks great. I’d say that the description tool-tip is the greatest improvement, and should be adopted to the text based interface as well.
The only concern I have is that the icon concept might impede too much on smaller screens. I would definitely prefer to have the choice between both this and the old text based layout.
I agree with the previous posters - nice to see the UI becoming more graphical but I’m also concerned about size. I do a fair amount of travelling and therefore often need to fit both Revit and Dynamo on my screen. So I think Dimitar is right in asking to be able to switch between menu layouts.
I’d be interested to know how you are planning to bring this to packages / custom nodes as well.
I also put my points with the previous posts. Nice with a visual way of telling you what a node does! And also curious like Andreas how this will affect custom nodes/packages.
basically i like the concept.
when opening “Revit”-"“Elements” (that is a crowded sub-menu) it takes quite a while till all nodes are visible on screen. but that is maybe only at first run.
searching for an item in the menu list is very slow too.
I would love to see the menus customizable especially as they getting more and more packed.
And last but not least i would appreciate if menus could be positioned freely on screen (like Revit’s project browser)
Thanks a lot for the feedback all of you! I see the screen size is definitely a concern.
Questions on screen size
Did you guys have 5 items as the default size? Like Thomas’ http://abload.de/img/14.11t6okn.png
How often do you guys use the library to just browse through the list vs use the search to find what you want?
Proposal - need your input
Would these 2 strategies solve your library-eating-up-canvas problem? You can let us know through comments there as well. Thanks!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TvLrSEeqKAhRBckThe4XbQZBPtwxjtHPPR2b-dzUS1U/edit?usp=sharing
EB
Hi Peter,
Could you let me know what Revit version you are using? I thought we solved this issue of library being slow a while back.
Noted about your suggestions on the customization and free positioning library.
EB
i am on revit 2014 and dynamo 07.4Library20141111
the slowing down only occurs on 1st run
I like the visual part. It really looks awesome.
I’ve noticed that there are some nodes doesn’t have a “description” yet.
Also the spaces. There are a lot of useless spaces/It takes time to see all of the sub menus (like Thomas) … these spaces could be used for some nodes. (maybe there is a way to make the nodes automatically change it’s position when I re-size the menus width… I don’t know.)
Also; It would be great as well if the menus could be float freely on the screen like what Peter said, or to be re positioned in the top of the screen (like grasshopper)?
New look is awesome!
@ Elayabharath: Also both options you propose are solving some screen space issues. I’m thinking that would be great to have a kind of vertical ribbon - something like the tool palettes we find in Civil 3D - that will allows us to navigate between tabs.
I’d like to see drag and drop of nodes onto the workspace. I’m only new to dynamo, but after the current one-click operation drops the node in I then have to grab it and position it accordingly. Drag and drop would allow me to place it more conveniently from the start.
Also if I want to add say, 3 more nodes, my 3 clicks (or 3 ctrl+v) places the nodes directly on top of each other. Cascading (window?) placement would be nice!
Great work so far, keep em coming!
on item 2 - I’m not sure if I’m the only one but I quite regularly browse the Library for a particular node. Usually because I’ve forgotten the exact naming but I know in which category to search for.
I think this is a great improvement and the graphics are very nice and explain a lot. I did run into some navigation issues though. The scroll bar is very narrow and the popups thumbnails kept interfering with trying to scroll. Basically they kept getting in the way and I couldn’t scroll. Seems to me there needs to be a “gutter” where the cursor doesn’t prompt the thumbnails to pop up so you can scroll with ease.
I also noticed that the search has now gotten significantly slow and laggy (Windows 8.1, Revit 2014). It’s not responsive at all and as you type, you don’t see the letters you punched in right away. It takes a while and then as the search narrows down, you see your input…kinda jumpy. The results are also not as relevant as I remember them a while back. Usually the search returned exactly what I needed at the top of the list, but now it seems I have to go down the list to grab what I need. Somewhat the relevance of the search has been affected.
I’m also still wanting to drag and drop the nodes rather than clicking and then move them from the center of the screen. Overall navigation still feels a little clunky but that’s probably due to the fact that there are some new keystrokes to learn, so it should get better with practice. I do however miss having 3D navigation keystrokes consistent with Revit. The Orientation gizmo really helps with orientation, thumbs up for that! I also feel we need an “x-ray” mode to reveal items, such as points, within geometry.
For some reason the installer didn’t place correct references in Revit 2015 and I’m getting an error (haven’t tried to resolve by checking the addin file as it works in 2014 just fine). Overall I do like the direction this is going, although I still have a hard time navigating and getting what I need without using the search. I also think there should be an effort to consolidate node functionality into as few nodes as possible and toggle options within them rather than creating completely stand-alone nodes, as having a large quantity of nodes that do very similar things makes it hard for the end user to manage. Thanks.
Hi team, great work on this part. a few comments from my first experience:
search engine is not as relevant as in 0.6.3. nothing to do with the graphics, but related though. Many examples can demonstrate this, just give a try with “types”. doesn’t provide All element of Type node in result.
menu size is to wide when dealing with custom nodes hierachy (see clockwork for example)
please enable an icon per package at least if not per custom node
I’ve also noticed a slow down at first run
@ Elayabharath: I only look into the library manually when the search result is not accurate.
please do the search in canvas as shown in the shared doc!!
Couple things that I can comment on:
A bit slow in Revit 2014.
It did uninstall automatically Dynamo Add-In for Revit 2015 … so I have to rollback to 7.3 as I want to use Dynamo under R2015.
I also like the new style of the UI. But I have also some remarks:
Some groups are hard to browse. for example, if you want to work with lists, there is now “normal” Core/List, and under Add-Ons there is again Core/List and also Core/Lists. I think this should be grouped again.
the lowest level menu items Create, Actions and Query should all be next to each other, like it is already implemented for Actions and Query.
perhaps there should be something like “power-user-mode” where the main icons (Color, List, Math, etc.) come without text.
the search is realy nice, I use it a lot. A wish of mine would be to search directly from the canvas (like it is possible in grasshopper). Then the library can be closed during side-by-side work on small screens.
at some points subgroups would be helpfull. For example, in geometry it would be nice to have groups like Arc/Circle/Curve next to Cone/Cube/Sphere. By the way; the menu item Tesselation is very hidden at the current position…
Realy looking forward to the next version…Fabian
