DynamoText

Convert text strings into Dynamo geometry. Each character is flattened into line segments using WPF's font rendering engine, giving you real curves you can use in any downstream geometry workflow.

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What it does

Text.FromStringOriginAndScale takes a string and returns a collection of Curve objects — one per line segment in the flattened glyph outlines. The result is placeable geometry: set an origin point, set a scale, and the text lands exactly where you want it in model space.

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Nodes

Text.FromStringOriginAndScale

Input	Type	Default	Description
text	string	—	The string to convert
origin	Point	—	Bottom-left anchor in model space
scale	double	—	Scale factor (1.0 = roughly 1 unit tall)
fontFamily	string	"Arial"	Any installed system font
bold	bool	false	Bold weight
italic	bool	false	Italic style

Returns: IEnumerable<Curve> — the line segments that make up the text outlines.

If fontFamily is not installed on the system, throws an ArgumentException and tells you to call GetInstalledFontNames().

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Text.GetInstalledFontNames

Returns a sorted list of all font family names installed on the current machine. Use this to discover valid values for the fontFamily input.

Returns: IList<string>

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Installation

Dynamo Package Manager

Search for Dynamo Text in the Dynamo Package Manager and install directly.

Manual

1. Build the project (see Building)
2. Copy dist/DynamoText/ into your Dynamo packages directory:
   • Dynamo Sandbox: %APPDATA%\Dynamo\Dynamo Core\<version>\packages\
   • Revit: %APPDATA%\Dynamo\Dynamo Revit\<version>\packages\
3. Restart Dynamo

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Building

Requirements: .NET 8 SDK, Windows (WPF dependency)

dotnet build src/DynamoText.sln --configuration Release

The CreatePackage MSBuild target runs automatically after build and assembles the installable package at dist/DynamoText/.

dist/DynamoText/
├── pkg.json
└── bin/
    ├── DynamoText.dll
    ├── DynamoText.pdb
    └── DynamoText_DynamoCustomization.xml

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How it works

WPF's FormattedText class converts a string into a Geometry object using the system font renderer. That geometry is flattened into a PathGeometry made up of PathFigure segments. Each LineSegment and PolyLineSegment becomes a Dynamo Line, scaled and translated to the requested origin point.

Y-axis is flipped on the way out (-y + 1) so text reads left-to-right and bottom-up in Dynamo's coordinate system.

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Requirements

• Dynamo 2.x / 3.x (ZeroTouch library)
• Windows only (WPF font rendering)
• .NET 8

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License

Apache 2.0