Lilli Smith

We move quickly here on the Dynamo team. Now that 8.0 has been out for a few days, we’re going to start talking about pre-release 0.8.1 features!   In any of the daily builds after DynamoInstall0.8.1.20150416T0453.exe, we have made enhancements to the graphic visualization capabilities of Dynamo.  In addition to an improved base grid and coordinate axis, a new node Display.ByGeometryColor is now available.  While we really wanted to get this out in time for the 0.8.0 release, there were a number of changes that we made to the underlying graphics tools that were not yet tested.  That’s where you come in, dear early adopter.  Please try out the new nodes (on various and sundry Graphics Cards if you have it) and let us know what you find.The Display.ByGeometryColor needs just 2 inputs: geometry and color! So you can simply hook together geometry with a color node (like Color.ByARGB), use Color.ByARGB in a code block node,  or you can use the color range node to color based on values.

Examples

1. This example shows simple coloring of geometry, in this case 7 swept arcs of a rainbow, all colored at once via the color range node.

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rainbow.dyn

2. In this example which uses the Attractor.dyn sample file, the cylinders are being colored based on the size of their radii, which are sized based on their distance from a  point.

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Attractor with color.dyn

3. This example, based on the Revit color sample, shows walls from Revit which can now be colored in both Revit and Dynamo. Here we are coloring walls that have a surface are over 50 sf in red and walls under 50 sf in blue.

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Revit_Color_withDisplayColor.dyn

DynamoSample_2015.rvt

Known Issues – Hardhat required!

  1. Colored display overlaps the original geometry and therefore may sometimes be hard to see. To correct this problem, hide the preview of the original geometry.
  2. Colored display won’t show up on remote desktop as the new visualization method requires hardware rendering. Please let us know if this is an issue for you.
  3. We are still working on saving camera angles, when you save and re-open your file, your camera may move.
  4. Geometry may sometimes appear dark – we are still working on getting the lighting right.
  5. Edges currently show up as white – we are working on this too.
  6. Sometimes colors can take a little bit of time to display. We are also working on performance.