HAPPY NEW YEAR!
We hope the end of 2019 was fun and productive for you! We're excited to get going with our PDUG activities for 2020, so keep reading to see what's coming up.
EVENTS
Our last event of 2019 was a Show-and-Tell at L2P on November 5, showcasing some Philly-made Dynamo workflows including automated documentation of prefabricated panels, setting up sheets, and developing custom curtainwall patterning. Thanks again to L2P and all our presenters.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Our next event will be co-hosted with the Women in Architecture committee of the Philadelphia AIA on Tuesday January 28 at the Center for Architecture. Our joint WIA/PDUG events highlight women pushing the boundaries of design and digital technology and always draw a good crowd. This month's event will feature Nicole Koltick, founding director of the Design Futures Lab at Drexel University. She will present a number of recent project from her lab, which pursues speculative design research through software, hardware, and material experimentation with extensive exploration of digital fabrication methods and material innovations. Food and drinks will be provided by our generous sponsor, Microsol Resources. Be sure to register early - the event is open to all, but has limited capacity. For more information, go to the event page on the AIA Philadelphia website.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
NEW LEADERSHIP:
Speaking of the WIA, our esteemed PDUG founder and co-leader Efrie Escott of KeiranTimberlake was recently made co-chair of the WIA. With that new responsibility on her plate, she and our other PDUG co-leader, Uchenna Okere of RevitGods, have decided to hand off the leadership reigns. They've asked me to take over, so let me introduce myself. My name is Dan Howard and I'm an architect at Ballinger here in Philadelphia. I've presented a few of my scripts and projects at PDUG, so you may have seen me before. If we haven't met, I'm looking forward to meeting you soon. You can email me anytime at phillydynamo+dan@gmail.com. Efrie and Uchenna will still be involved with some things behind the scenes and presenting at PDUG, so you'll see them again too.
SURVEY COMING SOON:
We'll be conducting a survey in the next few weeks to help gauge our PDUG membership needs - what content has been the most useful to you, what you could use more help on, what topics should be repeated, suggestions for future topics, etc. Thanks in advance for your help, and keep an eye out for the survey. As always, feel free to send us your suggestions and ideas anytime at phillydynamo@gmail.com
DYNAMO TIPS OF THE MONTH
AU 2019:
Did you know all of the sessions from Autodesk University 2019 are available for free? Most include video recordings of the presentations, slide decks, example files, and handouts. There were a lot of Dynamo courses available this past year, so this is a great learning resource. One course I found interesting was "8 Years worth of Dynamo and Revit Classes from 1 Speaker in 60 Minutes" by Marcello Sgambelluri of BadMonkeys and The Simply Complex Blog. Marcello has won the 1st place speaker award 15 times at AU and BILT conferences over the years. This presentation covers a lot of different advanced uses of the Revit family editor environment for highly custom modelling and Dynamo for automating common model setup tasks and geometry creation. Marcello's signature 'cheat sheets' provide condensed instructions for many of his examples, so there is a ton of great information in one quick bundle.
PACKAGES:
Have you tried out the Data-Shapes package yet? This package lets you make custom user interfaces for your Dynamo script, including customizable graphics, input fields, instructions for using your script, and much more. Its especially useful when combined with Dynamo Player to the general Revit users in your office, allowing tightly controlled interfaces with your script. Search for it in the Dynamo package manager.