Dynamo Intro & Overview

Overview

Dynamo is an open source add-in that provides a visual programming interface to work in conjunction with Revit. This allows computational design and automation processes through a visual node based interface.

If you have ever worked with Rhino Grasshopper or the Material editor in 3DSMax, you will be familiar with the interface style. Find Dynamo through the Manage tab in Revit, and clicking Dynamo will open up a new window that holds the interface. (more on the Dynamo player later)

Main Uses

Dynamo is extremely powerful partly because it's open source. If you aren’t familiar with open source technology do a bit of research from the wikipedia above, and off some other areas. It means that the code base and development of the program is a community effort, which leads to the development of a better software, but also on the backend there is more openness and free sharing from the community of users.

Experts

Because of this, the Dynamo forums are a huge resource for solutions. People write some code, others contribute to it, and the cycle repeats itself. This has developed into tons of experts out there in the scripting interface and how to interact with Revit… along with some really great dynamo definitions. Konrad and Nathan are linked above, but do a quick google and you will find tons of other people that are insanely good at Dynamo and coding.

Coding Language

The coding language used is Python. Ultimately you are going to get to a point where the default nodes in dynamo aren’t enough, and you can add your own custom Python code. All the experts in Dynamo are great coders and utilize code to extend the function of Dynamo.