A while back I got into a conversation with Daniel Hurtubise at Renzo Piano Building Workshop about possible Dynamo use cases. It turned out we had aligned ideas: Trying out different randomizing techniques with Revit Planting (and other) Families.

Today I recorded a short video demonstrating how you can do this in Dynamo. For the method to work you need parametric planting families. I got mine from Revit legend Andy Milburn. Read about (and download) my revised families in my blog post Flat People. Planting Families are a bit weird in Revit, but Andy made them flexible by using Family Nesting and Number Parameters for width and height scaling, in addition to an Angle Parameter for rotation.

This is a generic workflow that can be used on any number of Revit Families and Parameters. For instance, I have randomized facade modules with the same methods previously.

Our fantastically talented and in many ways awesome Ph.D. candidate Margarida Jeronimo Barbosa asked me if she could delete some Levels in a Revit project file. After I had elaborated for a good 10 minutes about the possible implications of doing so, she gave me the “I’m going to walk away from you, crazy person” look. Trying to prevent that, I introduced the idea of using Dynamo instead. She lingered, hesitantly.

In short, stuff gets deleted if you delete a Level that hosts stuff. What stuff, you ask. Dunno, I respond. At least Views (and their view specific stuff), Floors and Roofs. More than that? Possibly. Not very reliable consultancy, that.

So, how does Dynamo enter the equation? With Dynamo you can select all elements on a Level! Yay! How? Watch:

Like I noted in the video, you’ll need Andreas Dieckmann’s Dynamo Package, called “Clockwork”. That package will help you with a lot of other stuff too., and has a GitHub Repository at ClockworkForDynamo.