Sol Amour, a graduate from the SOA at VUW is to be in Wellie the week OF 13 March. He has accepted an invite to do a presentation while in town on how he is using tools like Dynamo and Python in a practice in London. He has recently had his class on Python in #DynamoBIM accepted for Autodesk University, London.

Describing what he does in his firm at designtech.io in London, we have asked that he provide a general level chat about what Dynamo can do. It will probably focus upon the geometrical section and simply touch upon the how's and why's Dynamo can be so powerful in a data sense (As it's most commonly used to date).

In terms of Dynamo, I do the following kinds of work:

Data:

All forms of data automation - effectively trying to alleviate time consuming repetitive tasks that don't use too much brainpower. Lots of this is pure data / workflows, but some fun stuff to show could be:

- Slope validation (Tells you if the slope meets specification)

- Window orientation (Window quandranting for passive house design)

- Model Audit and validation (Can run a script that pushes out Revit data)

Geometry / Optioneering:

We do a bit of work with Geometry but it's not our day to day. I can present however the following.

- Slatted Facade (Geometry entirely created in Dynamo and pushed to Revit. Flexible)

- Glacial Table (Geometry entirely created in Dynamo. Optioneered within Dynamo)

- Brick Placement (Logic of how to place bricks - can change coursing very easily)

- Project Fractal form finding (Can use a myriad of different options here to showcase how Fractal works)

- Bone Blimp / Turtle (Use of Adaptive Components in Revit to place via Dynamo. Can achieve interesting results)

- Bubble spread (Simply playing with this one)

Strategy:

Big firm strategy (Arup, Mott MacDonalds, AECOM etc) when it comes to the re-use and uptake of Dynamo.

- Naming conventions (How and why this matters to big firms)

- Templates (Consistency is key)

- Usage tracking (Metadata parse out to SQL database and/or csv file. Allows for the monetization and profit/time analysis of graphs)

Custom tool building:

We also build tools (Revit addins / Dynamo packages) that could be fun to talk about as it's been my natural progression since leaving VUW. We utilise Python and C# at present in the creation of content.

- Designtech Dynamo package
- Designtech tool bar / addins.
- Bespoke Python nodes to speak to the Revit API