UI refresh causing UX issues

[solamour]

@Paul_Wintour

Node scaling - Used Monocle’s graph resizer and it works great. Would have been better if we diddn’t need to use it at all, but at least we have a workaround. Thanks John.

@john_pierson has been working on a Graph Migration Assistant (Not finished yet) for us which you can check out here: Release Dynamo Graph Migration Assistant Beta Build · DynamoDS/DynamoGraphMigrationAssistant · GitHub

This may do what you are after in bulk

@Paul_Wintour

Deleting nodes - @solamour to elaborate, if a node is not in a group ‘properly’ and the node is moved, the node is automatically added to the group. This is expected behaviour. The UX problem is that once added, the entire group is selected, so if you hit delete expecting to delete the node, the entire group is deleted. The solution is for Dynamo NOT to modify the current selection once the node is moved. This seems far more logical to me. Why would I need to select all the nodes in a group?

I’ll submit an Improvement request into Jira for this one - agree the current behavior is odd.

@Paul_Wintour

Right-clicking on a group allows some functionality but not minimise/expand functionality that the carrot provides. This means you have to scroll in to the (very) small icon to minimise/expand groups. Not a problem for small groups/graphs, but a major issue for large files.

I can also submit an Improvement request in for this one - makes sense to do!

@Paul_Wintour

Adding nodes to group - I don’t see why this would be so problematic. If adding elements to a minimised group, the nodes should stay exactly in-place. Groups only resizes in the Y-axis, not the X-axis, which in itself is weired. If it is not compressing the extent of the graph, then what is the point of minimising the group. I much prefer Grasshopper’s clusters (which are not the same as custom node!) but I won’t open that can of worms. My main issues is that to identify nodes not properly grouped, I have to zoom-in, minimise, zoom-out, wait for UI to refresh for 30 sec, find problematic nodes, add to group, zoom-in, wait for UI to refresh for 30 sec, and then collapse again.

We made the decision to not collapse the groups horizontally in the X-Axis as uncollapsing them could then overlap with a bunch of other nodes in the graph and reduce clarity. Could you please let us know what behavioral choices in the GH Clusters you prefer specifically?

@Paul_Wintour

Zoomable library UI - I wan’t aware of this functionality. I see it is in preferences but it would be helpful if the UI indicated to the user that this functionality exists. Especially for those migrating from older versions.

These are mentioned in our blog posts - out of curiosity, do you read them? If so, was it not clear enough? From Dynamo 2.18 there are settings in the Preferences Panel for them that serialize to the .DYN file.

@Paul_Wintour

General slowness when zooming in/out - I have a large file (2300 nodes). Zoomin in/out trippers the alternate node display. On a file this size it is taking 31 sec to refresh (refer video attached). This is absurd and highly problematic given some of the above mentioned issued, e.g. I have to zoom in to be able to collapse/expand a group.

2300 nodes in a single graph? Wow… that’s really going to be pushing understandability limits! Is there a reason you need this mega-graph this way? Noting that every single node in a graph will hold onto it’s results in memory (By design - so that you can use preview bubbles etc. to inspect at every stage), and that rendering elements on a screen does take computer resources. However, we are aware we have scaling issues with Dynamo right now, as you duly noted, and will take a look at doing some Spikes on them shortly.

@Paul_Wintour

NEW - Updating a note causes Dynamo Revit to crash. Crash file has been sumbitted to Autodesk via the popup. I believe the issue is to do with bullets. Adding a dash creates a bullet but sometimes, not always, it will crash Dynamo on existing nodes with dashes.

This sounds bad and we should investigate - do you happen to have the CER number on hand? FYI @Aaron_Tang

@Paul_Wintour

NEW wire error colour - Sometimes, when there is no error whatsoever, the wires turn orange. Moving them resets the colour.

Can you check if you have the Show Run Preview option on? The orange nodes show you which nodes will recompute when you hit run (i.e. have been marked as dirty as their data has changed).

@Paul_Wintour

NEW category by name is returning the wrong categoy. This is new behaviour as far as I can tell as Revit 2021 and Dynamo 2.6 didn’t do this. Is this a known issue?

This should have been fixed, so we’ll need to look into this again CC @vlad.catalina