Yes, that is the point in condensing. You can choose to condense on a layout base, so if you need parts with separate lines, you don’t condense the parts, see what you need!
Your first example : insert change divisi at the beginning of bar 17. Restore unison four bars later. There’s a “new staff” that appears below, in galley view. Select the music of those four bars, filter down-stem voices, move to the staff below (alt-m). That’s it.
Thanks. Can I just condense those two bars in the pic, for the part? Can you tell me the steps?
In your second example, I suppose everybody plays the first bar (f# half c quarter)? Then copy it to the staff below. Select next notes, filter second notes or bottom notes and move to staff below. Make sure, when there is only one note (unison) that both staves have it. You’re set.
Yes, of course! My point made! That’s what I’ve been doing here and there, depending on the music, for more than 200 bars!
In a situation like this, in which I didn’t start with separate staves for separate lines, but instead wrote a single two-voiced up/down stems staff (in fact I didn’t write it, it came imported as XML)…
…nothing can be done to avoid copying, pasting, filtering, moving, etc. when I embark in the divisi/unison function.
Yes you can! In Layout options (Cmd-shift-L) make sure you select the appropriate layout in the right panel (viola part)
In the Player tab (left panel)>Condensing, enable condensing even for section players. Now you can use condensing changes in Engrave mode > Engrave menu. At the beginning of the piece, insert a condensing change, tick viola and highlight them blue in the list, enable manual condensing, choose the first option : no condensing.
Insert another condensing change on bar 17 (or before, make it at the start of the system that holds bar 17) repeat the process but choose reset or manual condensing. At the end of the four bars, repeat the first process if you want condensing to end (if other divisi are there and you do not want them condensed)
Ditto. Thanks, Marc. That’s exactly how I’ve been doing it. No other way.
MusicXML doesn’t know anything about “divisi” or “condensing”. It just imports notes and staves to copy the appearance of the original score, not its semantics.
I missed that message, I was too busy answering your other messages. XML import can earn you time, but it’s not that great, because you’ll need to do some work to clean it all (and correct the mistakes). What you need to know is that you can assign shortcuts for nearly all the operations involved here (select down-stem voice, bottom note, move/copy to staff below, insert divisi/unison, insert condensing change and so on) so once you know how Dorico works and what exactly you need to do, you can build yourself a set of shortcuts that will speed your workflow dramatically.
Yes. But it imports by track. So if I import say a Viola track, which often has two voices playing at the same time, it translates into a single staff. I don’t think Dorico can import a single track and automatically “explode” its contents into two staves.
So either you manually and painfully explode that music into two staves from the beginning (I didn’t) or you will have to eventually copy/paste/move things around when you try to use the divisi/unison function.
It is quite fast with shortcuts, nonetheless. (you can set them in the preferences). Just choose the bars in question, apply filter with a shortcut, and then move down as Marc said.
To get back to one staff with condensing, activate it in the layout options (cmd-shift-L/ctrl-shift-L), and in the players > condensing section activate condensing. Chose “allow to condense divisi” (middle option), and it should basically already work.
If not, you can then still enter manual condensing changes at the appropriate points.
Yes. I’m even mulling over getting a stream deck for all this…
I have two of them (15 and 32 keys) but I would use my keyboard shortcuts for that because… I know them, they make sense to me and I don’t need to look anywhere else… YMMV, but the important thing is to understand what you need to do, what different steps are required and how you can improve and optimize the whole thing. Once it’s clear, you’re going to fly over this and the real power of Dorico (outstanding output) will really shine.
Sure. You don’t need to tell me that, I’m in the middle of doing it for a project with about 80 “condensed” and “divisi” staves imported from Music and about 4000 bars of music.
It’s quicker than re-entering all the notes, though. (Another guy spent about seven years doing that, using Sibelius) 
Thank you for all the answers. I know now that my guesses were right. It took a while to explain myself, but as it turns out I was doing what everybody has to manually do at some point given certain circumstances.
I’ll try condensing with your detailed instructions when I finish tweaking the instruments.
As of now, I am adding solo passages in string sections. Open a divisi, add a soloist, move the preexisting music from the top to the new bottom staff (I still feel that’s a bit awkward, but it’s how it is), then add the solo music at the top emptied staff.
Shouldn’t the staves at those bars show the labels “solo” and “gli altri”, as the divisi menu shows written in their respective labels? Nothing appears in either view: galley, page or part. I may be missing something.
Go to Layout Options / Staves and Systems / Staff labels, and select where you want the divisi labels to be displayed.
This will only affect Page View, because Dorico doesn’t know where the system breaks are in Galley view.
Perhaps Daniel can help with this?
Select the divisi flag and press Enter. You’ll see a dialog box with options for staff labeling.
I’m happy to help, but I don’t have a lot of time, so if you want my help, please zip up and attach the project and include clear directions to where the problem resides.