Through the Interface

Dynamo 2.7 – Migrating MaRS to CPython3

After being teased with some graphics improvements coming in Dynamo, I was excited to find on returning from my recent holiday to find a new release of Dynamo Sandbox was available for testing. There are a number of notable features available in Dynamo 2.7, whether the ability to run CPython3 code – rather than using IronPython, which is based on Python2 – or improved graphics preview performance thanks to an upgrade to Helix. I started by just loading v2 of the MaRS graph, without changing any of the code blocks to use CPython. Straightaway I found that the graphics... Read more →

Saving data for selected generative designs from Revit 2021

In the last post we saw how the Data.Gate node can be used to send geometry to Revit 2021 when the “Create Revit Elements” button gets pressed from the Explore Outcomes UI for a Generative Design study. Phew. In this post we’re going to dig into how this node can also be used to have other “side effects” such as storing the various input parameters to a text file. For the purpose of this workflow I’ve chosen to hack the standard Three Box Massing.dyn graph (which ships with Revit 2021 as a sample for the Generative Design feature). The... Read more →

Managing data flow to and from Generative Design studies in Revit 2021

I was inspired to write this post by a chat I had with Zachary Kron, earlier in the week. I’d been noodling on how best to support a workflow where users of the Generative Design feature in Revit 2021 can select specific solutions in a study and do something with them. The specific use-case was around some functionality I’d prototyped back during the days of Project Refinery, where while exploring the results created during a generative study you could double-click individual designs – whether in the scatterplot or the design grid – which would add them to a graphical... Read more →

Don’t worry – we must have finally reached "peak Kean"

I have the sense that I’m seeing my face too much at the moment (admittedly I’m very attached to it… haha). All I can say, in my defence, is that over the last few weeks I’ve started to receive more requests to participate in virtual activities. And I’ve mostly said yes, as it’s a reasonable alternative to travelling to meet people, given the current circumstances we’re all in. In case you haven’t seen these various pieces of virtual content – and you’re actually interested – here’s a quick round-up of some current and future ones. Getting Simple When my... Read more →

An update on our post-COVID office layout explorations

For the last few weeks I’ve once again been heads-down on Generative Design-related tasks after several months working almost exclusively on Dasher. I like switching context like this but it can certainly be a little disorientating, at first. Anyway, it’s been really interesting working once again with my friends in the AEC Industry Futures team (the rockstars formerly known as The Living), and with Rhys Goldstein – the designer of the algorithms driving the Space Analysis package – on imagining a tool to help with post-COVID office layouts. Something I speculated about a little while ago, although that was... Read more →

Online lectures from ITA and IAAC

As a follow-up to the last post which talked about SimAUD and it’s going online, today I wanted to mention some other online resources that might also be of interest to people during these times. The Institute of Technology in Architecture (ITA) at ETH Zurich is one of many institutions that have moved their public lectures online and have made them available for anyone to watch. So far I’ve watched a couple of them live, the second one being by my friend and former colleague, Matt Jezyk, who is now spearheading Tesla’s efforts to streamline gigafactory design using techniques... Read more →

Attend SimAUD 2020 online next week for only $50 ($20 for students)

Next week is the annual Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (SimAUD, pronounced Sim-Odd). This conference was started a decade ago by my former manager Azam Khan, along with Gabriel Wainer and Ramtin Attar. I’ve only had the pleasure of attending one SimAUD event – the 2018 edition was held in the Netherlands at TUDelft – but I was hoping/planning to attend this year’s in Vienna: a paper submitted by Rhys Goldstein – with Simon Breslav , myself and Azam as co-presenters – was accepted for the conference. Here’s a quick photo from a dinner we had... Read more →

Minor updates to Warnamo and Capturefinery

I’ve made some minor tweaks to a couple of my Dynamo packages, this week. One was to make sure Capturefinery – a tool that generates screenshots and animated GIFs for Refinery optimisation runs – works with the shipping release of Generative Design for Revit 2021 (it now does, but needed to look in a new directory structure). This is available from Capturefinery 0.9.11. The other was to add a feature to Warnamo – a tool that lists the warnings and errors in your Dynamo graph – to let you export the error list to Excel. This is available from... Read more →

Dynamo 2.6

I’ve been banging pretty hard on Dynamo 2.6 – via Dynamo Sandbox – for the last few days, and I have to say I’ve been very impressed. Node renaming labels, code numbering, much improved PolyCurve performance… the combination of these various features have really helped with a project I’m working on right now (more on this next week). Congratulations to the Dynamo and Matterlab teams for this compelling update. So far it’s really making a big difference. Check out Sol’s blog post and head on over to DynamoBuilds.com to get the Sandbox build to try out! Read more →

Getting better-looking text in your Dynamo graph output

One of my pet peeves with Dynamo – as I typically use it standalone from Revit – is the quality of the text you can generate as graphics: the Dynamo Text package will generate curves (actually lots of little lines) that represent the outline of your characters, but they often look quite lame depending on your zoom level. Actually scratch that – they look lame irrespective of the zoom level. Sigh. Anyway – today I finally dug into what I needed to do to create better-looking text as output from your Dynamo graphs. My first attempt was to create... Read more →

Geometry Systems and the Refinery Primer

I mentioned last time that I was expecting to publish some posts about Autodesk University 2019 material I found particularly compelling (now that I’ve had the chance to consume some). I didn’t get to watch as many recordings as I’d have liked – for now – but I did manage to watch the rest of a class of which I only caught the first few minutes before having to run to another meeting in Las Vegas, my friend Lorenzo Villaggi’s session on Geometry Systems. There are two main pieces to generative design systems – at least in the way... Read more →

Reliving AU in Amsterdam

As the festive season is upon us, I’ve decided to start each post with a seasonal photo. Here’s me with a reindeer/dog (reindog?) in the lobby of the hotel we stayed at in Hoofddorp. As mentioned in the last post, Sander Lijbers made the most of my vague suggestion to meet with a customer or two during my visit to the Netherlands by inviting many of the accounts he manages to a one-day event in our Amsterdam office. Everyone accepted – with some even flying in from the UK – so we had a really good, engaged group! Sander... Read more →

Not coming to Las Vegas? Watch two of my AU2019 sessions from the comfort of your armchair

Or at your desk, or from the train. Just please don’t watch them while driving. Anyway, the point is that this year two of the three sessions I’m presenting at Autodesk University 2019 are part of the event’s livestream schedule. The first is on Wednesday at 10:30am Pacific: The second is on Thursday at 3pm Pacific (I have a 15-minute segment at some point during the hour timeslot): I’m not sure what’s happening with my third class – which is focused on Project Rediscover – but if that doesn’t end up getting recorded I’ll make sure equivalent material is... Read more →

Project Rediscover - version 2 of the MaRS graph is now available for download

In advance of next week’s AU2019 class entitled “Hands-on with Project Rediscover: generatively designing Autodesk Toronto's office”, I’m happy to announce that version 2 of the MaRS graph is now available for download. (Many thanks to Simon Breslav for all his work on the graph, as well as to both Simon and Rhys Goldstein for their hard work making Space Analysis what it is: a cornerstone of Project Rediscover.) While version 1 was about “getting something out there that works”, the focus for version 2 was to have something that’s more discoverable and understandable. We’ve done a few things... Read more →

Generative Design for AEC on Redshift

There's a new video on Redshift highlighting the work being done by the Refinery team, as well as some use-cases for Generative Design in the AEC space. Check it out! Here’s the article with the video and its transcript. I really like the way the animations illustrate some possibilities for the technology. Here’s one relating to stadium design: I also saw a more complete article has been posted giving useful context regarding the video about the GD residency in Toronto I shared in this previous post. Something else to check out, when you get the chance. From my side... Read more →

BILT and the Highlands

After the pre-BILT Hackathon on Wednesday, there were still three full days of the main conference to be experienced in the beautiful city of Edinburgh. My family was with me – at the start of our 2-week Scottish adventure – so I wasn’t planning (or able) to spend the full 3 days at the conference. I did make it along to the opening keynote, however, which was largely run by Marcus Fich, who introduced two Danish psychologists who talked about (among other things) our response to stressful situations. It was a very different and interesting session. After that I... Read more →

The DBEI Generative Design Hackathon in Edinburgh

On Wednesday morning I headed off, bright and early, to the Generative Design Hackathon that had been organised by DBEI prior to this year's BILT Europe in Edinburgh. I wandered past the local church in Bruntsfield: The walk to the conference centre led me via the canal: I arrived at EICC, the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, which is also hosting this year's BILT Europe over the coming days. Proceedings were kicked off by Wesley Benn, Executive Chairman of DBEI: He introduced the teams: And the judges: While Hypar's Anthony Hauck introduced the expert users (myself included): As well as... Read more →

Autodesk’s third Soirée de l’Excellence Française in Paris

On Wednesday morning I hopped on the train to Paris, once again, this time to present at Autodesk France’s third “Soirée de l’Excellence Française”, an invitation-only VIP event for AEC customers in France. (I’d have blogged about it beforehand if the event was open to all, of course.) I arrived at la Gare de Lyon, as usual, and found an interesting art exhibit outside. I walked next door to the citizenM – part of the chain of hotels I’ve stayed at for AU London, the last two years. It’s a fun place to stay, although the switch to turn... Read more →

Looking back at the GD for AEC Residency; looking forward to the DBEI Hackathon

The Toronto team has posted a nice video looking back at July’s Generative Design for AEC Residency: It was clearly an interesting event – I do hope I’ll get to attend the next one. Here’s a still I extracted that shows Sol Amour, Dynamo’s Product Manager, hacking away at Python inside Dynamo. The Python node is big enough to be clearly visible on the video (the code itself is not, but I’m sure it’s about to do something cool). I’m starting to think about next Wednesday’s DBEI Hackathon, which has the theme “Generative Design in Practice” and so I’m... Read more →

Talking to VINCI in Paris

After a quick trip to Zurich on Tuesday, on Wednesday I took the train to Paris. I’d booked a hotel that was convenient for our Paris office, and walked there from la Gare de Lyon through le Parc de Bercy. I’d made tentative plans to meet up with friends in the evening, but as they had to cancel (for excellent reasons) I ended up wandering around Bercy Village to get a quick bite to eat. I’m mostly a people person, but I have to admit that having the occasional evening to myself is bit of a treat. (I’ll be... Read more →