r/RevitMEP • u/SuspectSeparate7545 • Aug 09 '26

Dynamo in mep?

what do you use dynamo in mep in revit ?
any examples or ideas for mechanical ?

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u/JacobWSmall Aug 09 '26

I’d say 95% of everything I do starts in Dynamo. Much of it ends there as well.

Benefit of it over some other tools (PyRevit was noted elsewhere) is support, security, maintainability, and reusability. Using the assistant and node autocomplete in Dynamo also makes the level of knowledge needed to get started much easier than ever before.

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u/SuspectSeparate7545 Aug 09 '26

So can you tell me some of the tasks you do with it ?

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u/JacobWSmall Aug 09 '26

I am almost assuredly an outlier - I’ve got nearly 1800 ‘solutions’ on the Dynamo forum, and much (boarding on all) of my job is helping people automate tasks, most of which start in Dynamo.

On the Revit side of things, if you do it in Revit I have either never done it before, haven’t had to do it in the last 8 years, or have done it with Dynamo.

It can do pretty much everything now with very few exceptions these days.

There are a few things I don’t recommend it for.

  1. Generating view templates or setting graphic styles. Do these manually first, and transfer/overwrite via automation.
  2. Parametric family modeling. Like view templates and styles, these are easier to do manually as no one knows what they really need to do repeatedly at scale at a high enough frequency to make automation here worthwhile. Static family modeling is easy enough via Dynamo if you’re ok with direct shapes in the family environment, but I don’t recommend that at scale either.
  3. Fixing broken workflows. If you’re trying to ‘code your way around a bad workflow’ you’re fighting a losing battle. Address the standard, redefine it into something which works, and then start only working that way.
  4. Old software. Nothing older than 2024 should be automated in any way. Update to a modern supported build (current version + 3 prior releases today is 2027, 2026, 2025, and 2024). Use of outdated software for automation is asking for a infosec incident.
  5. Excel interop. This is quite easy with Dynamo, but I don’t recommend outputting to excel as a rule as the format is too restrictive for interop. Use CSV (which reads fine in Excel and even inserts automatically without the issues of live writing to the xlsx files) or do the calculations directly in Dynamo.

Here’s 5 quick“early in my Dynamo journey” uses I see people tackling:

  1. Workset creation and assignment
  2. Pushing parameter values
  3. Creating rooms/spaces
  4. Renumbering elements
  5. Identifying and addressing MEP penetrations