I have looked everywhere to find a tutorial on using Dynamo with Fabrication Parts in Revit. There are many tutorials on how to design lines and shapes using graphs in Dynamo but there are very little to almost no tutorial videos on how to use Dynamo on Fabrication Parts in Revit. Am I not looking in the right place or what? I asked yesterday about changing the fabrication part colors for exporting to Stratus and Navisworks so they can keep the colors and pretty much all I got was to read Dynamo Primer lol. I donât need to know how to make objects in Dynamo. I just need to know how to use Dynamo with Fabrication Parts. Iâve tried so many graphs Iâve lost count. Can someone point me in the right direction and please donât point me to Dynamo Primer.
Yeah,
Shoot guys
The Primer is suggested as a starting point because it covers the fundamentals of using Dynamo, not necessarily because of the specific content it has you create. The beauty of Dynamo is that it uses the existing APIs of the other applications it interfaces with. This means that you donât need to know how Dynamo specifically interacts with Fabrication Parts. Fabrication Parts are just a category in Revit. If you understand how Dynamo interacts with Revit and you understand how Fabrication Parts work in Revit then you know how Dynamo interacts with Fabrication Parts. This is also why it may be harder to find content on the specific process that youâre after - the process for working with any Revit content is the same and thereâs plenty of content on how to work with Revit content.
Also, if youâve tried different approaches and they arenât working⌠share them. Itâs much easier for all of us to respond to specific questions or issues than provide an entire solution for a generic task.
So there are two things at play here. Iâll separate them with lines to help keep things straight. Please donât take this as direct criticism - you arenât in the wrong - but these need to be addressed for the benefit of the community not necessarily you and you alone.
The first thing going on is a misconception about the primer.
I am a power user. I have worked with firms in every corner of the earth. Helped industries which you never would have expected Dynamo to apply to. Between in person and digital interactions I have likely met more Dynamo users than almost anyone. And in all that time and all those people I have met⌠not once have I had someone ask me for help around a topic which is on the Primer.
This might be due to the primer being âself helpâ (having done the exercises many times I likely scratch my head enough to know that isnât likely). It might also be due to people knowing there is stuff there so why ask. But this isnât because the primer is bad.
The primer is not a source for solving specific problems or it would take 10,000 hours to go through. The primer is there to teach concepts so that you can go about solving specific problems.
Most if not all Ither user facing tools in AEC (Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Forma) are limited in what you can do. They consist of is a series of buttons you push to get an outcome that similar to other outcomes. To simplify it further, those tools are your calculator app. Limited buttons produce limited results.
Dynamo is unconstrained as it is a programming environment, more akin to Visial Studio than Revit. This means you control what it does and at most a primer can help you get your feet wet. It is built to make you think there are limited buttons, but itâs a calculator app that can return a 3D model, the next great literary work, simulation of a car crash to test a child safety seat, BIM, CAD, or a pretty picture. You define what it makes - the rails are gone.
And while there are lots of tutorials, users who say âI know Dynamoâ and only know what they learned via a tutorial are often novice in the grand scheme of things.
So when the community pushes you to the primer (as I saw happen in your other post), know they arenât doing so as there is a solution to your problem, but because there seems to be a bit of missing knowledge in the posing of the question.
The next issue is that Fabrication Parts are niche content.
The entire toolset is not just Revit technology but AutoCAD woth some added DB interaction as well. Stuff that could be done for other categories in Revit like changing object properties winds up being intentionally limited to keep the fabrication database from falling out of sync with the Revit model. As such the otherwise simple task like adjusting a dimension requires 3 extra steps to achieve, and is minimally exposed in the Revit API even then.
While this isnât ideal, I have found that when there is enough demand the community will usually come up with a method to get stuff done - and this is no exception. Most of what can be done has been; however it isnât necessarily maintained which may be a limiting factor for you.
The last complication in this area relates to the specifics of your query. People who want to help need to not only know Dynamo basics and fabrication part API basics, but also additional tools in both Navisworks AND Stratus (never even heard of this one before) which are entirely outside of the Revit API. And so while it may be that standard Revit API can achieve what youâre after, someone confirming it would have to first have all three toolsets installed, happen to have the same version of each that you are using, then build a dataset which matches yours to a reasonable degree, build the automation you are after, and finally test the result. Knowing this will take awhile to build, and that it takes more effort to maintain, how likely do you think someone would be to jump in and start this process manually if they didnât also need this in their work? Community members will try to help out with specific questions readily when given, but generic workflows like this involving the niche topics⌠thatâs a tall order.
And so this sums up the issues you are facing in getting what you seek. No answers yet, but it hopefully helps set up the context of your frustration. Now letâs try and find some answers.
Since this is somewhat niche, youâre going to have to author a lot of this on your own. To do that type of authoring you are going to have to learn the basics and even intermediate aspects of Dynamo. Itâll take a day to go though the primer, and that is the best starting point as it teaches the concepts youâre going to have to apply.
After you upskill yourself a bit, youâre going to have to document how to manage the task without Dynamo, as Dynamo can only do what Revit can do. And if you donât know what you need to get Revit to do, you wonât stumble into making Dynamo do it. Write down every step, in order. What buttons you hit, what UI components you need. And what standards you might want to review.
After that, start to put your automation together. As you go though it, if you get stuck ask in the forum.
If you get stuck making something that should work actually execute then post a simple Revit file showing one element which needs to be modified and one element which has been updated, your Dynamo graph to replicate the progress so far, and an image showing the issue youâre hitting.
If you get stuck finding a node or script to accomplish a specific task, post what you have tried and a description of the task you are after.
So with that in mind - what are the steps you would have to perform to do this manually?
Thank you for your reply. As stated before I am pretty new to Dynamo. We switched our piping data base for SYSQUE to Fabrication Parts and unfortunately Revit does not work as well with Fabrication Parts as it does SYSQUE. The main thing I need to do is make our model keep the colors of the systems that I make. In SYSQUE this is not a problem because I can just change the material parameters and the colors stay the same when I export. In Fabrication Parts it does not and it exports all of my systems the same white color. This isnât as much of an issue in Navisworks because I can use an appearance profiler and change the colors in Navisworks to what I want them to be. Unfortunately Stratus does not have an appearance profiler. I watched this video https://www.autodesk.com/autodesk-university/class/Using-Dynamo-Fabrication-Parts-Revit-How-It-Can-Automate-Mundane-Tasks-2018#video from Autodesk University where the guy was able to do alot with Fabrication Parts using Dynamo and it did exactly what I need to do. I will post a screenshot of what he was able to accomplish below. Yet when I try to replicate this for some reason or another I get errors. I am reading through Dynamo Prime. I do get the concept of Dynamo although it is a bit confusing at times. I have circled below what I am trying to achieve in the list of scripts that the guy in the video has accomplished.
Iâm sorry, I circled the wrong one lol. What I am trying to do is set fab parts to Revit Material.
I think this image is what we need to help you get over the hump!
The relevant section of the primer is here: https://primer2.dynamobim.org/5_essential_nodes_and_concepts/5-3_the-building-blocks-of-programs/1-data
What this message is telling you is that the parameter âFabrication Serviceâ doesnât expect a string (word) but something else. What that something is, i donât know. But you can check it by extracting the parameter (I believe the node is Element.GetParameterByName - make sure it doesnât say âvalueâ in it), and asking what itâs storage type is (I believe Parameter.StorageType though my node name may be off again). My gut tells me itâll need an element ID, but not sure which or where you get those.
Have a look at your other topic you created 
.