AU 2020 – Magical Mystery Tour

This year I’m doing a technical demo session for #AU2020, of course, with it being 2020 it’s not going to be a normal AU session!

Lots of things will be different this year, to begin the majority of sessions or class have already been recorded and will all be released at once as “On Demand” sessions (750+ of them) starting Nov. 17th at 9:00 am Pacific time. There will still be live Keynote sessions, as well as Panel and Roundtable sessions that will also be live (350+ live sessions). The AU team has released a full schedule that you can search all of the sessions and bookmark them to future reference once the content is available starting Nov. 17th. You can find that scheduled HERE

So this is where my class fits in, it will be a session on Dynamo as the title suggests “Dynamo isn’t Magic but these Tips and Tricks might seem Magical”. Because it is an instructional demo it has already been recorded and will be available for viewing by all on Tuesday, Nov. 17th at 9:00 am PT. Now you can use the AU scheduled mentioned above to find my session and bookmark it, you can also just click on the title of the session also listed above to go direct to the session page. The session page is where you will be able to find the video when it is out, as well as the class handout and presentation (again all available on the 17th of Nov.) The session content will also be available on my website, along with all my past handouts and presentations under the Speaking tab.

at the time of this post Version 2.3 is most current for the handout and presentation

There will also be a “Live” portion to my session in the form of a 1-hour long Q&A session on Friday Nov. 20th at 11:00 am PT (2:00 pm ET). You can download a calendar invite from the session page, which is also where you can join the session when it is time on the 20th.

Now the session itself is about Dynamo Tips and Tricks, and to put it together I reached out to many AEC Industry and Dynamo AllStars to submit their tips and tricks to be shared with the Community in my session…and boy did they deliver!!

A HUGE thanks to all the Dynamo AllStars that shared some of their Tips & Tricks for this session!

Session Description:

In this session we will explore some Dynamo tips and tricks to improve your workflow, add efficiency to you graphs and maybe even add a little fun to your day.

We will look at some simple tips that you can be easily added to your everyday workflow to add automation and increase efficiency. We will also explore some more complicated tips and tricks, that are less general, and designed for specific AECO workflows. We will also spend some time looking at tricks that take advantage of the latest Dynamo updates, including Dynamo extensions for Dynamo 2.x Then we will wrap it all up by looking at some of the packages that make these tips and tricks possible.

While the general flow of this class will be exploratory and fun, the tips and tricks reviewed will be able to help increase efficiency and productivity within your everyday Dynamo workflow.

Learning Objectives:

Learn some new tips for your everyday Dynamo workflows and graphs
Find out what some of the new features of the latest version of Dynamo
Learn about some great Dynamo packages and extensions available for Dynamo 2.x
Learn some new tricks to improve your graph efficiencies within Dynamo 2.x

A little secret about the recording of my session, I was told to just approach the recording as if I was doing it live, so I did one take and done. I may have ended up going a minute or 2 over my 60 minutes, and there is a special appearance by my cat Taz…he stepped on the “clicker” and advanced my PowerPoint about 15 slides super fast, and then I had to rewind it back 15 slides super fast. At the end of the recording, I chatted with the engineer working on my recording and we both agreed to leave this in the session as it really does fitting with being a session recording in 2020.

There are other great session you should check out too, here are just a few.

A Discussion on the Diversity Problem in the AEC Industry – by Purvi Irwin

Generative Design at Hogwarts: Using Tech Instead of Magic – by Jacob Small & Alexandra Nelson

8 Yrs’ Worth of Dynamo and Revit Classes from 1 Speaker in 60 Min Volume 2 – by Marcello Sgambelluri

Next-Level Visualizations with Revit Advanced Materials – by Dan Stine

Bringing ISO 19650 to Silicon Valley: BIM Challenges on the BART Extension – by Brindusa Dumitrascu and Peter Starnes

You can also catch an AU 2020 special edition of BIMThoughts being published on Nov. 17th at 9:00 am PT (12:00 pm ET) where Bill, Dana and I chat about the idea of a virtual AU, classes we would like to attend, and some of our favourite AU memories from the past!

I do hope that for AU 2021 we can all get together again, Zoom is great but it doesn’t replace the real thing!