Dynamo and XML: the Sidetracked Reviteer

I read Nathan Millers blog post today about the new release of Lunchbox including XML parsing and exporting and naturally I wanted to try it out.

What ended up being not so natural was the data I used to test the nodes on.. As the title says I got sidetracked.

I googled "xml open data api"  showing only norwegian results and after a couple of minutes looking through the results I was looking at a XML of all the representatives of the norwegian parliament.

And after some fiddling around: Voila! All the representatives sorted by age in excel. The real question is what can't Dynamo do?

Hopefully I'll be utilizing these nodes for something better in the future. (And also not setting up lists of norwegian representatives on a friday night.. Jeez..) But one of my goals for this blog is to show people that you can do virtually anything with Dynamo, and I guess this falls into that category.

Now, off to more sensible stuff.

3D Grids in Revit using Dynamo

Go have a search for "Viewing grid lines in 3d view" over at Autodesk knowledge network and you'll get, and I quote the solution: "Currently, you cannot display grid lines in a 3D view."

Well spank my ass and call me Sally..

But until we can do this in native Revit, lets give Dynamo a go shall we?

One could probably expand this definition by optimizing text placement, setting letter sizes according to view scales, adding grid bubbles and whatnot. The only thing I've added is the possibility to choose which level the model curve grids are placed at. For me that's enough.

A little screencast with no lyrics or chatter for your viewing pleasure.


EDIT: Here's a version were you can choose whether the definition will make grids at all levels or just one.

the definition