Concepts, Definitions and Terminology

Workspace

1. The active Workspace is the area where you interact with the elements of your visual program. When you start Dynamo you are in a blank Home Workspace. You start creating your visual program here by placing Nodes and connecting with Wires.
2. You can save the Workspace as a .dyn, or Dynamo file for later reuse. Dynamo files can be opened from the File menu or the Samples menu. Opening a Dynamo file clears the previous workspace and opens the file as the new active Workspace.
3. A Workspace is executed when you press the Run button.

Nodes

1. Nodes are the objects you place and connect together with Wires to form a visual program.
2. Nodes can represent Revit Elements like Model Lines or Reference Points.
3. Nodes can also represent operations like Math Functions.
4. Nodes have inputs and outputs.
5. The colors of Nodes change to indicate state.
   a. Orange Nodes are well-connected and have all of their inputs successfully connected. They are part of the active Program Flow.
   b. Grey Nodes are inactive and need to be connected with Wires to be part of the Program Flow in the active Workspace.
   c. Red Nodes are in an Error state. You can see what the error is by hovering your mouse over the node and reading the tooltip.
   d. Currently selected Nodes have an aqua highlight. You can drag selected nodes around the workspace or right-click to see their properties.
   e. Nodes have input Ports on the left side and output Ports on the right side. Directionality of execution and program flow usually goes left to right.

Wires

1. Wires connect between Nodes to create relationships and establish a program flow. You can think of them literally as electrical wires that carry pulses of information from one object to the next.
2. Wires connect the output Port from one Node to the input Port of another node.
3. You create a Wire using the mouse left-clicking on an output Port and dragging with the mouse button held down, then connect to the input port of another node. Wires appear as dashed while being dragged and solid lines when successfully connected.
4. To disconnect a Wire, left-click on the output Node and pull the Wire away.

Ports

1. Ports are the light rectangular areas on Nodes, they are the receptors for Wires. Information flows through the Ports from left to right. a. Inputs Ports are on the left side of the Node. b. Outputs Ports are on the right side of the Node.

2. Ports are expecting to receive certain types of data, for example a Node might work on Point objects or Line objects. Try to connect like outputs to like inputs (XYZ->XYZ for example). Passing a Line object into the input Port of a Node that is expecting a Point will result in an error.

3. You can tell you what a specific Node is expecting to receive or to return from the text label. If the name is cut off, simply hover over the port and a tooltip will appear.

Program Flow

Workspaces have a Program Flow that is represents where to start program execution, what to do in the middle and how to know when program execution is complete. When you press “Run” Dynamo executes the visual program according to the established Program Flow.

Directionality of Execution

1. Typically Dynamo visual programs are executed from left to right and you can read the program that way to understand the Program Flow.
2. There are some exceptions as you get into advanced topics like recursion, but for the purposes of this class simply read from left to right.

Custom Nodes

1. You can create your own reusable Nodes in Dynamo without programming. These Nodes can be used in the current Workspace or in other Workspaces on your machine. You can also share these Nodes with others. Create new nodes from File>New Custom Node or by selecting existing nodes in the workspace and in Edit>Create Node From Selection (or right click in the canvas). Give the node a name and a category (selecting from the pulldown or by entering a new name. Notice the background color gets lighter when you are editing a user-created node.
2. Custom Nodes appear in the Node List like the other nodes. You can double click to edit these nodes at any time or by selecting their name from the View menu pulldown.
3. Custom Nodes are graphically distinguished from other Nodes by looking like a stack of nodes. When you see a node with a several more underneath, it is an indication you can double-click on it to edit the contents.
4. You can share nodes you create with other colleagues by using the Save-as command under Menu. They can open the .dyn file you give them and Dynamo will import the node into the local definitions directory.
5. Custom Nodes can be nested inside of themselves to create recursive functionality, such as Fibonacci sequences or fractals.

Workflow The active environment that will be executed. The aggregation of the active workspace, python scripts and all dependent user-created nodes.