I am trying to input an orchestral score into Dorico to practice my note input skills and increase my familiarity with the program. The orchestral calls for 3 “Percussion” parts, each with multiple instruments. When I initially added them through the Ensemble option, I got 3 Tom parts and they were placed beneath the piccolo for some odd reason. Then, I changed their name to percussion and moved them down. However, this orchestral score requires a 5-line percussion staff. When I go to select that option, it doesn’t appear ANYWHERE in Layout like it’s supposed to. I even tried the jump bar and tried it in notation and engraving options, but to no avail. Percussion has always been my weakness when it comes to notation software, and I would love to get this figured out!
Where are you going to select this?
And also, are they set up as 3 separate players or 3 toms in one Percussion Kit?
In setup mode, you probably have a percussion player. Right-click it>Create empty kit. Then, in the empty kit mini menu (to the right of its name, the three dots)>Edit percussion kit.
There you can change the kit’s name if needed.
And add whatever instruments you need on this kit (with the + button). Note that you can also take already created instruments for that player be used into that kit, with the button that looks like a big U with an arrow that enters the U. Or “unkit” instruments with the button where the arrow goes out of the U. Obviously, that U represents the kit.
Once you’ve got your toms into that kit (I suppose you’ll have different flavours of toms, high, low…) you can place them on the 5-line-staff as you wish. Select each of them and use the little up and down arrows on screen for that. Edit their playing techniques to modify their aspect (noteheads, position…) according to the playing techniques used.
Once this is done, you can invoke Layout options, choose the layouts (right part of the options window) that you want to modify, then Players>Percussion and choose how you want your kit to be displayed : 5-line-staff seems to be your choice here.
Hope it help!
I believe I mentioned that I go to layout options, but I’ve also tried notation and engraving options through the jump bar.
I didn’t select Toms. In the ensemble builder, I typed in 3 perc, but they appeared as Tom 1, 2, 3. They are 3 separate parts, not one kit. However, I will need to create a kit or combine percussion parts in the future to finish that score.
So which percussion sounds did you wish to include? A kit can only hold unpitched percussion, but a Player can hold a kit of unpitched percussion as well as pitched percussion instruments.
I have never added percussion instruments through the Ensemble Builder. However, based on the issue you are having, I would not attempt that method to add percussion.
I would follow what @MarcLarcher stated above. The method he stated is probably the easiest and most comprehensive way of adding percussion parts to a score.
Robby
I think I figured out my issue. One, I can’t add just an empty percussion part, that’s probably because it assigned Toms to the score, maybe a default option. I needed to go in and create an empty kit and put in the instruments I wanted for that kit. Then, it went to the 5-line staff that I was hoping for. Then, once I had an instrument in the kit, the Layout options showed Percussion! So, I think I followed what you were saying, and it worked! Thank you.
So, I got the percussion parts added, but now they’re showing as Percussion I, II, III, when my engraving options are set for 1, 2, 3. Why did it switch my percussion parts only?
Your percussion players are section players, not solo players. That’s probably something you don’t want (and it explains why the numbers are Roman)
In Setup mode, press shift-P. Don’t choose any instrument in the instrument picker. Duplicate that Empty handed solo player twice (alt-cmd-shift-P?). Now open your three percussion section players’card, to reveal the kit they are holding each. Drag and drop one kit to a solo player, repeat the operation twice and now you can get rid of the empty handed section players 
You actually left the “options” bit off the end and I just wanted to double check.
Anyway, at least you’ve sorted it out.
Ah, I see! Sorry about that!