Improving Your Workflows Using the Dynamo Player Capabilities

MICHAEL GUNTHER-GEFFERS: Welcome, and thank you for joining my class, Improving Your Workflows Using the Dynamo Player capabilities. In this class I can hopefully give you some not so straightforward tips on how you can improve your work inside of areas using the Dynamo player.

I am Michael Gunther-Geffers, called GG. I'm an Dynamo enthusiast and this is why I became to write a lot of scripts and also Dynamo player scripts for Alias. So most of the scripts you will find shipping with your Alias installation are for me. And in this class, I will give you an update on what in regards of Dynamo and Dynamo Player we've done in areas 2022.

So in 2022, update two, we have added the Dynamo toolbox button in the Dynamo player tool window. And if you click on that, it will open Dynamo toolbox shelf, which consists of all the Dynamo player scripts which are shipping with the Alias installation. So you have directly now, in the interface, in the Dynamo player tool, access to all the scripts, most of them with an icon, which gives you a better overview in regards of what's available to you. And as you can see we have just in this year, added or improved 18 scripts for this purpose. The shelf is not editable. So you can see it like the subtitle shelf or the What's New shelf. But you can use it to direct you the tools you want to have from here to your own shelf.

So how does this look like inside of Alias? So if you open the Dynamo player in the transform top of the pellet. Double click, you got this button, Dynamo toolbox. And clicking that one brings up the Dynamo toolbox shelf. And if you see here any kind of tool you'll like or you'll want to use more often, you can just click a mouse button, drag and drop it to your shelf and there have easy access to it if you need it more often.

So what are the different application areas of the Dynamo player? And hopefully I can give you some new ideas, which you might have not thought about before. So one area are templates. So templates are for reoccurring shapes, structures, processes, or things you do over and over again, is where you might be able to use the Dynamo player. And one example here, are Nurbs templates.

So again, if we go into Alias and start the title script, the title script needs a construction point as an input. So I'll just quickly create one. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. If you then double click here on the tire button in your Dynamo toolbox, it will open the Dynamo player tool with that Dynamo Player script being loaded. The construction points are selected. You hit accept. You hit Build. And you get a tire.

So what's new now, also, in 2022 is you see here a kind of a curved preview, which is controllable with this new button here. So let's activate auto update, so we see that happening. What this curved preview does, it allows you to choose a pattern if you want to create a 3D tread So you can choose, for example, to have a higher number of grooves and in radial direction, how many you want to have. And the curved preview is pretty fast, so you can use that one to choose what kind of pattern you would like to have. And then you can hit the Create 3D tread option. And that takes roundabout, let's say 30 seconds to 60 seconds.

And what's happening on the Dynamo side, these curves are used also to create profiles, solids. Those solids are then subtracted from the general solid shape of the tire. And by that, you get real 3D geometry as a tread. So I already learned that some people in the car industry are using this one. They are not responsible for tire generation at all, but they're using it just to make their models look better. They don't look so naked. So this is a appreciate add-on which they can use to have a better Visual presentation of the work.

So should hopefully be done now any second. Sorry, and now if you have a look here, you can see that we've created a 3D tread geometry.

All right. Another possibility of Nurbs templates is to use curves as input to create, for example, letters or any kind of draft solid. So, to show you that one, let's just open a new file. I'm using the tool finder to use the text tool. And I typed in some letters. And I now want to show you how you can use these curves. One of those can be any closed curve to create a solid out of that one, which can also be beveled or filleted

For that one, again, you look in the Dynamo toolbox. You choose this one here, curved solid. Double click. And the first one, it asks you to pick the outer curve. So let's just use the A here. Remove the inner curves, because the outer curves are used to create the general solid of the A. And then you pick the inner curves, and these are then subtracted. And it doesn't matter if there's one or two. You just have to select them.

And if I hit Now Build, you'll see we get a solid, showing you the letter. And it also has additional-- but I'll switch off the grid for a second so we can see better what's happening here. And you can also have the option to chamfer this one here. Choose different radius.

But you can also, if you don't want a chamfer you can also fillet it. For example, let's say fillet a 5. And then you can see, you get a nice filleted letter. So in case, you want to have any kind of font letter solids to be created, this is an easy and fast way to get those one, instead of to manually do all this kind of work. So it's another Nurbs template you can use. Maybe it's useful for you.

Another possibility are Subdiv templates. This is also something you've seen over the last year or two happening inside of Alias. So if I open-- well it's actually. Oh, there it is.

So what I've prepared here is just a background sketch. And as you can see, I've created a modest band degrees 3 curve to kind of paint the outline of this sketch car, with a curve. And I'm using this side profile, curve view and another curve to create a complete Subdiv car to then start modeling from. And to use that one, it's in the subdivision tab of the Dynamo toolbox. It's just called car.

And here, it is ask you to pick the side silhouette, which is optional. If you don't choose it, you'll get a flat car. Then-- Oh, wow, OK. I got auto update on, so as soon as I selected that one, it already started creating, which I actually didn't want to use. So then you can use a curve here to be used for the width of the car, which I'm doing right now. As you can see now, with two simple curves you start from a pretty good Subdiv model of a Subdiv car, so you're just saving the first five minutes of modeling to get here.

And this one is still adjustable, so you can choose if you want to have more faces from left to right, you can update this one here. and the same way you can control to create more radial spans, more spans front to back. And then you can start with your desired amount of faces to start your Subdiv modeling. So for now save it. And obviously if I move it now I do lose the history and I got a regular Subdiv model to start working with.

And by the way, this car also has a possibility to just create half of the car, or just the wheel arches. So you got some options there.

Another possibility area of templates are general templates, which you can see on the right, which is just creating your package data. So it gives you the dimension in which you are allowed to design. This is also very helpful.

And then the next area of things you can use the Dynamo player with is the T-Spline library. The T-Spline library is a library we're using inside of Dynamo to do all of the Subdiv operations. So while it is called T-Spline library, you can basically see them as Subdivs. It's just like the superset.

So, I've been using the T-Spline library to create a lot of primitive tools. So, you can see on the right the tools. But if you look in areas and the toolbox, you see that we have many more like primitive tools like the [? quad ?] ball, the sphere, the revolve tool. So these are all primitive tools for your subdivision surfaces, which are not available in the subdivision pellet. But because they are Dynamo player tools, in the Dynamo toolbox, if you want to use them more often, if you have a subdivision shelf, you might find many of them, if not all, useful. And you want to maybe drag and drop them, then, onto your shelf.

So as mentioned beside, there are primitive tool shelves, or general tools like the revolve tool. But also the sweep tool is a more complex tool which I've also improved this year, due to some feedback of some customers who found it rather useful. But they didn't like the fact that the sweep tool was always creating the sweep starting from where your profile curve is. And this wasn't wanted. They want to be more work like the Nurbs sweep.

So what I've done now is you're selecting the profile curve. You're selecting the path curve. And then, now it's optional where your sweep is generated. By default, it will be generated at the profile, at the path curve. This was the wish from the customer. But if you want to use the profile position, you can do that, too. I've also added the ability to adjust the start and end parameter, just like in the Nurbs version. So you can choose to shrink your sweep if needed. And you can, as before, still control the profile spans and path spans to get different results.

And the feedpack I got with these changes nowadays are a daily tool for one of the subdivision modelers using alias. So I was pretty happy with that, to hear that it's now a daily use tool. So it means it's really valuable to have in my work actually pay off.

So then also, as you can see here, the pipe tool has now an option to not create capped ends. Also, a request from a customer, which I've implemented this year.

Then we have the generative modelling part. So this is more the typical area of Dynamo, where I don't spend too much time on. So we have a subdiv hexagon script inside of our installation. If you use the crease mold, it will look like here on the right, where actually nearly looks like Nurbs, but these are subdivision surfaces. If you don't crease them, you would get a result like this. You can use attractor points, like to have the nonlinear distribution. So it's interesting to see, I think, these two patterns have been created using their same script. So, take a look at it. Pretty cool. It's been created by my colleague, Kai. And he also created the Nurbs diamond pattern, which you can see here again, using an attractor point to achieve a nonlinear distribution and hole size. So if you're interested in how such things are done, just check Kai's script out.

And then it's also possible to write kind of modification tools. I'm saying kind of, because you are creating a copy on the Dynamo site, and you're modifying it, and then afterwards you have to manually delete the input. But we are already working on that this manual step in the end is no longer needed. And one tool I've written there is the perpendicular line. So if you go back to alias, and open a corresponding data set where I can see you how this one is used.

So here we have, again, I used the script I've shown you before to create half of a car. And maybe you're modeling half of a car. And it's not exactly at your symmetry plane. And maybe, due to your modeling, you haven't been 100% precise. And as you can see here, some CVs fall off. They are not perpendicular line to the center, to your symmetry plane. And this means, if you're mirrored across, it seems like you have a crease are not good, continuity across the middle, something you usually want to have.

Then, you can use the perpendicular line. For example, this is one application to achieve mid symmetry continuity to your center. And for that one, I am using the perpendicular line tool, which is here. So double click allows you to pick this subdiv body. And I'm accepting it. Then it allows you to pick the CVs which shall be aligned. Accept it. And then either a plane or a surface. And if I hit build, you can see that all the points which are needed for G0 are pulled onto the symmetry plane. And all their points which are responsible for the continuity over the mids, are then perpendicular lines. So if you then mirror this one here across, you'll have a nice smooth transition between both sides.

So I found it pretty interesting that you can use Dynamo to write a tool which allows you to make a subdiv line. This is a rather complex usage, and require some deeper knowledge. But nevertheless, pretty powerful as I found.

And then, the next thing I'm going to show you is the morph between two subdivs. This is also, again, not new. But I've added a new option to that one, which I want to quickly demonstrate. So let's check out where morph object wire is. So here, I do have two subdivision car bodies. They've originated from the same one via copy and paste, but some changes to the major shape have been done. And then using the morph object Dynamo player script, it asks you to pick one object, then pick the other object. Again, have to come from the same body.

But then, before it was looking like this, right? So you could use one slider to move between the two shapes. So I'm making the morph ratio one, I'm getting the upper shape And if I'm using zero, I'm getting the lower shape. People found it disturbing that this one here is moving, so I've implemented a key position option. If this one is checked, then you can see the changes starting from your first selected body. And it roughly stays there using a center point approach. And now you've got the upper model, that the original position of your first body. And using layer visibility, you can transition between the two designs smoothly.

Then another area where you can use the Dynamo player to be aware of, is Dynamo has its own import and export formats. So for example, you can read Excel text, or the Comma Separated Value files. And those, for example, can be driven to, or can be used to drive, your package data. So if you get your package data from a team, you can maybe implement a workflow where they just provide it to you like the length, width of a car in an Excel, text, or CSV file. And you can then automatically use that one to create your package data. And by that your Alias modeller directly starts with this package data in place. So he or she knows what the boundary parameters of the design are.

Dynamo can also read in images. So here, this is a gray image of a shoe sole, which has then been used-- you might have seen the demo-- which has been used to drive this spike pattern here on the shoe, to define what is the size and the shape of the spikes. Such an image has then been used in live updating to actually get the bridges between Photoshop and using an image to control your 3D shape generation in areas. Pretty cool. So if you haven't seen that demo, I'd recommend to check that one out.

And I've also used the Dynamo file import export capabilities to write a Dynamo Player to read and write .tsm files, which then could be used to directly transfer subdivision surfaces between Alias and Fusion. This is a colleague of mine has used that one. It just shows how powerful it is, right? You don't have to wait for the next version of Alias to maybe support this natively. You can just go ahead and create your own scripts, and make your possible adjustments and improvements in Alias today without any kind of waiting for the next Alias release to come.

So then we're coming to the last thing I would like to point out, which are workflow improvements, where you can solve little tests yourself, again, instead of waiting for Autodesk to act on your request. And the first one I'd like to show you is the center pivot point. And for that one, again, I'm going back to Alias. I'm opening the center pivot point example, here.

And so the problem the customer had, they had trimmed surfaces like this one here, for example. They had a pivot point. And they wanted the pivot point, not like the usual center pivot does. So the normal center pivot point centers the pivot taking into account the CV point distribution. And this is not what the customer wanted. They wanted their 3D geometry, the visible part of the surface, to be taken into account for the center pivot point position.

So what I've done, is I just took this one, and wrote a script within maybe 15 minutes, half an hour or something like that. And the center point one here, which takes surface as an input. If you say build, it only takes into account the real visible 3D geometry to create a point. And then you can use that point here, again, to move your pivot. Press Control. Click near the created point to snap your pivot point to the center. And you've got what you want-- your pivot point being in the center of the visible geometry and center of the center of the CVs.

It's not a big thing, but it shows you within half an hour I could solve the problem, which they otherwise would have had to wait until we release a new version of Alias with this functionality being in. They could actually solve the problem themselves, which I find very powerful.

And the next thing I'd like to show you is a little bit of a live demo on another customer problem they had. So they had a lot of points. And there were a lot of duplicates in there. So if I go here, to say preconstruction, and I click here, you can see that sometimes two sometimes more points. There had a lot of duplicate points and they needed to have a unique set of points.

So how to do that? I'll just show you by toggling the layer bar, and moving all the construction points here. One layer, I'll create even a new layer. So this new layer this is where my Dynamo geometry will land on. So what I'm doing is, usually when I'm creating Dynamo Player scripts, I just start using regular Dynamo, because there's can have the live update between Alias and Dynamo. Starting a new script.

And the first thing I want to do is selecting all my input from Alias, which are all the points where I want to create a unique copy of all the points, which are going to come. Then I'm using a Dynamo note, which is called Prune Duplicates, which is doing exactly what the customer is asking for, taking points as input. And then filtering out all unnecessary copies.

I'm not sure why I can't-- that one here. OK. Here we go.

And then obviously, I want a unique copy sent back to Alias. What I also want to do is I want to give this one the tolerance option here to the user in Alias, so I'm choosing to create a number slider. Sensible tolerances are probably going from thousandths of a millimeter to, I don't know, one is probably the maximum. And I'm feeding this one, then, also into this note.

And one thing to be aware of. So, if you want to make a Dynamo play a script, select from Alias nodes always have this option, as input set. And this is needed to show up, then, in the Dynamo player tool window. Other nodes like this sliders are not, by default, showing up in the Alias UI because we don't know if you want that to happen or not. So this one here, I have to explicitly mark as, this is an import coming from Alias. And by that, it will show up in the Dynamo tool window then, when this is going to load it.

So if I just use this one here, live. So I'm selecting all these, sending them to Dynamo. And then bring up the Dynamo tool window here. And you can see from the 272 points, only 49 unique points are one. And this is what we wanted, right?

And, as you can see, we got a warning here. "Warning. Workspace must be saved on disk." And this is because usually Dynamo Player tools have history. And for Alias to be able to recompute the history it needs to know where the script definition is stored. And unless you write the script to disk, it just doesn't know what to do. And this is why this Warning occurs. So if I'm saving this one here to my download directory, and then the Warning disappears.

And now I do have my Dynamo Player script for creating just a unique set of points. And if I now just going back to pick up object here. Go to the layer where I've got all the points. And I go to pick construction. Now you can see all these points here are single points. And all I need to do, if I'm happy with the result, I can delete all the points on this layer here. And then just keep the points on layer 2. And I got my unique set of points.

And yeah. That's the end of my class. I hope you found it useful. And if you got any questions, I'm happy to take those one in the live Q&A. Thanks for joining in and enjoy using our products. Thanks.