Dynamo and space trusses: It's all in the Zip Lists

When posting yesterdays picture I thought that an elegant solution for my spaghetti monster of a definition was far off, but thanks to Colin McCrone and his awesome Zip lists node, I'm able to share it with you today!

I think it's big letdown that the node at this moment have just been downloaded a mere 22 times.. Well I'm going to show it off some of it's uses here, and I hope that it will be a eye openener for anyone operates with trusses at least.

See, a stumbled upon a problem when entering the world of parametrized trusses. the diagonal beams or braces..
I don't think I'm going to explain it fully in text but have look at what I used to do in some way or: another:

It works, but will still create a larger definition than needed.

So, enter Zip list node.

This node zip together two lists in every other fashion. Like this: {A,B,C,D} and {1,2,3,4} as inputs will return {A,2,C,D}

Resulting in the same definition looking like this:

A bit tidier I think.

So to the truss as I've showed you in the former post. It's still a rather large definition so if you got any suggestions, please message me! :) Also I could have shortened it down quite a bit by using code blocks for the most part, but I tend to lose track if the definition get too "programmy"

Part 1:

 Part 2:

Part 3:

In this example I've imported it to Revit as beams, I guess the next step would be to import it to Robot and get it calculated! :)

As always I haven't described in text what I've done, I am more of a show and not-so-much-tell guy I guess. However, if you have any questions feel free to contact me!

And a Screencast as usual:
Video

Dynamo and space trusses: A preview

No time long see!

I've been up to alot of other things, (It involves diaper change..) but I just wanted to show you a preview of creating space trusses that follow a face. I hope to present a definition in some time as well but it have a kind of spaghetti quality to it at the moment, so it's not worth sharing.

If someone wants to have a look at the definition and make it awesome, don't hesitate about contacting me!

Element.IsHidden

Came across a question on the Dynamo forum (here) about whether one could list all the hidden elements in the active view. After some API search, it turns out we can!

Some disclaimers first:

1. If we want to use the "All elements In Active View"-node as the element input for the node below, we have to enable show hidden elements before we run the definition. (You know, the lightbulb.)
   If you get the elements you're checking from other nodes: no problem.
2. If the elements are in a hidden category it can't be filtered out. It only applies to hidden elements. Hopefully, someone will prove me wrong and dig up something in the API to facilitate this issue.

Here is the .dyf-file with the Python script:

It's available in the package manager as "Element.IsHidden"

And here's what it does:

(Tip: Do you wanna learn some Python syntax for Dynamo/Revit use? open up one of Andreas Dieckmanns nodes in the Clockwork package and double click the Python scripts!)