Dynamo BIM

It's akin to Grasshopper (Rhino) for Revit, yes. But also rather different. Dynamo also has very practical uses and the ability to query any model data which makes in more in line with BIM than purely a geometry creation engine. Have a read of the DynamoBIM forum as was rightly pointed out by BoBMudd2.

You’re doing a disservice to Grasshopper by comparing it to Dynamo. Grasshopper is light years ahead of Dynamo and used by all major architectural, structural and engineering firms. Not only is it the best tool for form finding but more so for computational acoustic analysis, structural parametric design, egress, energy analysis, light analysis etc. design. The problem with Dynamo is not necessarily the way it’s built, but the fact that it’s built on Revit, which has huge modelling limitations. While Dynamo will continue to grow and one day may reach the same mature level as Grasshopper, Revit’s development is as good as done and will suffer a slow death. This means that Dynamo will have to halt its development eventually, unless Inventor or any other modeling software gets hold of Dynamo.

The users also plays a vital role in the development of Dynamo. Because Rhino users are generally designer or engineers seeking solution for the high end side of architecture, structural, acoustics, etc. grasshopper was develops for and by this segment of the market. They require a different set of tools. Dynamo which started off the same way as Grasshopper, doesn’t have that segment of the market to further develop its tools in the same was Grasshopper did. The average Revit user is a draftsman working for a local firm on projects that don’t require computational design tools. He rather have a proper working text tools in Revit, than a node that optimizes the amount off ETFE pillows on a double curved surface. , And because of that you can see that the Dynamo team have shifted their focus on bringing out nodes and workflow for local draftsman. Nodes to create levels with dynamo or nodes to renumber room using are examples of dynamo main area of focus.

Not at all interested in arguing about one tool vs. another.. but the second part of this sentence made me LOL. What planet do you live on, where Rhino has a market share of 100%?

Moved to the Dynamo sub-forum.

I don't know if you just don't know what you're talking about or if you just haven't used Revit enough to know that any modelling limitation in Revit is a minor one. I have yet to encounter any form that could not be modeled in Revit. While modelling complex forms can be difficult to accomplish, it can still be done, and at the same time maintain a parametric relationship to regular building elements and be used to collect data needed for construction and documentation.


Again, I think you are misinformed about Revit, it's users and their level of competency. I am an average user of Revit, and as an Architect, I use it for a wide range of projects. Does Revit need better text tools? Yes. Can Dynamo help create levels or renumber rooms? Again, yes, because in order to be an actual Architect, you need to be able to produce useful drawings. And I don't care who you are, a timesaver is helpful to everyone, including high-end designers. If you want to see some of the more exciting nodes in Dynamo, check out Zach Kron's buildz blog.

sorry robertobatista, but you have your "facts" wrong. Dynamo is built as a completely stand alone application, that just happens to have the capability to hook into the Revit API. It can also be hooked to Rhino. And Excel. And Inventor. And other applications. In fact, Case, Inc. has developed Rhynamo, that can take a Rhino model through Dynamo and build native Revit geometry.

For those that actually use grasshopper and have seen/used Dynamo, they would argue that while grasshopper is "older" in terms of development and therefore capabilities, to call them "light-years" apart would be a disservice. Because Dynamo is open sourced, many Grasshopper users are taking their favorite nodes in grasshopper and creating similar nodes and capabilities in Dynamo, and then making them available to all.

Wow. :crazy: You obviously have not seen what some people have done with Dynamo.

Dynamo has capabilities of creating geometry that can't translate into real Revit geometry. Take for instance a long standing wish, the ability to create 3d fillets, something pretty much all 3d (BIM) modelling software can do. Not so long ago someone released a node that can make 3d fillets to any geometry in Dynamo which is great. This translates beautifully into Inventor or even Rhino, but in Revit it imports as dumb .sat geometry which isn't editable (unless you use dynamo). The sat geometry acts like any imported 3d CAD geometry with all the visibility issues and un-schedulability and not being able to ad information to the geometry.
We can safely say that Revit will not improve its modelling tools for the remainders of Revit' life. There is no doubt that the combination of Inventor and Dynamo will be great, but will dynamo still be a computational design tool for Revit in a year or two when Dynamo drastically continuous to expand and improve or will it end up being just a tool to extract data out of Revit?

It would be interesting to see examples of firms using Dynamo for things they've done previously with Grasshopper. So far I’ve only seen sample of geometry created or data extracted from Revit but nothing on a real projects. Even at AU, ironically firms showed how they utilize Grasshopper on real projects but not Dynamo. I’ve asked around why they don't use Dynamo, they all reply the same; Why use dynamo if they can use Grasshopper for computations design.