Opinion Poll - Installing Packages on staff computers

1

I am a new BIM specialist at my firm. Over the course of a couple months I’ve been slowly convincing my staff on the benefits of Dynamo and automating time-consuming processes. I’ll soon want to push out graphs for my staff to use through Dynamo Player, but the question of packages has come up.
For the staff to run the Dynamo graphs properly, they need all the packages I’ve used to make the graph. Not many are adept at Dynamo enough to search and install the packages for themselves.

So in your firm, what approach have you taken?

  1. Give you staff instructions (written or video) to install packages on their own?
  2. Taken over and installed the packages for the the staff?
  3. Push out a batch-install?
  4. Custom-make all your nodes so that they won’t need the custom packages?
  5. Something else I haven’t thought of yet?

Would love to learn from all your amazing experience! Thanks for the Input!

2 Likes
2

A combination of 3 and 4 is best in my experience.

My approach is:

  1. Develop an inhouse package (local)
  2. Use data shapes when needed
  3. Store packages in user appdata folder
  4. Store copy on server
  5. Robocopy to appdata folders using a batch script
  6. Video guide showing users how to run the batch scripts

So far it’s been successful, although it took some convincing for IT to accept batch scripts. We tried an MSI as well but having to regularly update it was a drag versus just modding a notepad file.

For power users I let them use extra packages that are hard to emulate like Orchid/Bimorph, however generally most users wont need these.

4 Likes
3

At my firm, we store all our company wide scripts and packages on our server and we have a view extension that handles deployments and pulls scripts and packages to local app data. The view extension also updates the pathing in dynamo and has a scripts browser, wiki etc but you don’t need to go to those extremes, a batch script like @GavinCrump suggest would be good enough which pulls files from server to local.

4 Likes
4

I might be biased but… Okeestra :wink:

2 Likes
6

@jmayesP84R8 Have a look to NonicaTab PRO. You can import and export Revit toolbars with buttons that execute your Dynamo scripts and ITS PACKAGES. Attached you Autodesk App Store link and a brief explanation video of the Add-In:
https://apps.autodesk.com/RVT/en/Detail/Index?id=9212699819557407848&appLang=en&os=Win64
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql77qnl_gX0

1 Like
7

I did an instructional video. I make a “Graph” that has a node from each custom package in it, so when a new user opens it they are prompted to install the required packages. This is really simple through the dynamo UI, it just pops up on the right side. So part of the Dynamo kickoff is, open the launcher graph and install all requested graphs. Then player is gtg.

1 Like