## 5 Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Developments of VPL-Based Design
### VPL Design--Future Developments  
#### 5.3.1 Development of Software Environments  
The development of visual programming tools, which can be used for more than just civil engineering, is one of the factors that contributes to their widespread use. The environments and interfaces required for programming are constantly being developed and updated. Suffice it to mention, for example, the number of development versions of the Dynamo SandBox program, which is updated monthly at the level of several stable versions and even dozens of development versions [40]. This development occurs in several ways. New procedures (nodes) are developed and updated to extend functionality in many different areas. This applies both to the modification or creation of new options and the creation of nodes. The latter area mainly concerns the preparation of packages containing nodes intended for narrow, specialized use in particular industries or even their parts. An example of this is the Structural Analysis for Dynamo package, which makes it possible to prepare a script in a standalone installation of Dynamo SandBox that allows a parameterized computational model of a structure to be run, launched, and the results obtained in the Robot Structural Analysis Professional program. Regarding this package specifically, there is a need for its development due to the very fact of integrating these two environments, as well as functional deficiencies in the package itself. This is a natural direction for the development of visual programming. There are many other purpose-built packages that are continually updated (often with several updates per year), and new packages are being designed. In this respect, it seems that this will be the main direction of development for visual programming environments in the next few years, extending functionality and programming-specific problems. Another direction of development for programming environments is their integration and implementation into other design environments or platforms. This process is gradual, and in recent years, we have seen the introduction and coupling of programming software with BIM or FEM environments. As mentioned above, the Dynamo system has become a component of environments such as Robot Structural Analysis and Revit and has also been incorporated into generative design tools. One of the effects of the above development work is the simplification of the programming process itself through the creation and improvement of programming environments. Users are provided with increasingly powerful tools that can significantly shorten and simplify the design process. Another extremely important element in relation to the popularization of the technology of visual programming for engineering applications is access to documentation. This includes issues related to program support, such as installation, operation, and extension of functionality (e.g., installation of add-ons), as well as knowledge of visual programming itself. It should be noted that the documentation available in these areas is quite extensive, and a person who has the ability to independently search for information, apply it, and verify it in practice should be able to handle the correct operation of environments and prepare basic scripts. Basic knowledge is usually provided free of charge by software vendors, e.g., [41; 42; 43]. Since the environments discussed here have primarily utilitarian applications, sample files--scripts, commonly referred to as samples--are an essential part of the documentation. The database of available examples is constantly being expanded by scripts created by users, either privately or by commercial companies. In the latter case, there is, unfortunately, a cost involved, as they are sometimes made available for a fee. In addition to the free knowledgebase, instructional videos are prepared and shared on the most popular video services available on the Internet.