Dynamo 0.8.1 released, Summer vacation next..

So two things are up, summer vacation and Dynamo 0.8.1. Both are equally colorful and awesome. At least the last one mentioned. With 0.8.1, Dynamo gets some new features, read all about it here, among them the ability to give color to geometry. So why not use Dynamo for what it was meant to be: A colorized thermometer?

The idea came from the one and only Håvard Vasshaug. So a big shout out goes to him for getting me hooked on things that are somewhat.. unpragmatic. If you want, bookmark it under the "Because-we-can"-category..

But as Norwegians we're not always blessed with the best water temperatures and therefore we should be warned in our native software when water temperatures will peak the next few days, obviously..

So what do we need?
1. A meteorological institute with open data API: http://api.met.no/
2. Dynamo (goes without saying)
3. Three additional packages from the package manager: "Luncbox" and its XML parsers from Nathan Miller and Case,  the "UI ++" from Adam Sheather. (You don't actually need the UI++, but it's awesome!) and optionally the "Dynamo text" package from the father himself, Ian Keough.

Result?

And the rather messy definition:

Should probably have cleaned it up a bit, but ain't got the time, it's off for summer..

So long!

Dynamite: Analyzing topography slope with Dynamo

This time around we're going to look at an useful aspect of the new colorization tools in Dynamo. Namely, colorization of topographies in Dynamo. It still demands the conversion from Revit topography to surfaces in dynamo, but still, it's quite efficient.

The need for a tool that can give a visual representation of slopes in revit was asked for by Shrikant Heerekar in this thread over at the Dynamo forum. And both me and Vikram Subbaiah responded with quite similar methods, although Subbaiah developed a far more concise and stringent definition by using designscript. Be sure to check out his website here.

I'm gonna show you a little bit of both.

First up is a node based definition. (It includes the Mesh.FaceVertices node from the Clockwork package.)

As we can see, it's quite simple, and we can edit the colors to our own liking. Notice that the sensitivity slider adjust how little slope a single surface must have to "qualify" as green.

EDIT! I forgot to mention that you will have to turn of preview of the original surfaces for the colors to be visible. It's a known bug and they will fix this in future releases.

The next one is a codeblock/designscript based version which is based, or rather directly ripped of, Vikram Subbaiah's version except I have pulled out some parameters.

Last, a version that sends all the surfaces into Revit and override the elements color in a specific Revit view. This has to be used with great caution otherwise the head BIM manager in the project will cut off your head as the script generate one import instance pr surface. That's a lot of instances! But at least then you're able to put it on sheets etc.

so that's basically it. Here is a screencast for anyone into bad english pronounciation. 

If anyone have other great ideas for using this, let me know!

Building positioning by using Optimo, anyone? :)

Ammo: Some tips and tricks

So this time I'm more of a curator rather than creative innovator. As I've ever been such.. Just a small number of odd tips and tricks I've picked up lately from the forum or elsewhere.

Getting shared coordinates for further use in Dynamo
The easisest way to get coordinates for use in Dynamo is to access the project base point. Then you can add it to an Element.Location or whatever.

 Improved Object to String
Python strikes again in this python version of Object to String. The advantage you ask? You don't get as many trailing zeroes.

Calling functions with multiple outputs in codeblocks:
Now, this one has buggered me for some time, how do you call a function that have two outputs in Dynamo? Take the List.FilterByBooleanMask for instance. Once again Dimitar Venkov provides the solution.

Speaking of Dimitar, I wanna mention the awesome forum that we are so privileged to be a part of. There are many pioneers and helpful souls on the forum, but there are two who deserves particular mentioning for the shear number of replies. Thanks once again for the incredible work you're doing, Dimitar and Andreas!

So, ending in a rather unpragmatic way. Here's how to check Dimitar's and Andreas' replies and topics stats on the forum! :) set the definition to run periodically and you'll always be up to date..