Forgive me if this has been discussed before, I tried searching for this subject but couldn’t find it. I’m setting up my first project in Dorico and I’m running into what I’d consider issues with the percussion staves.
The piece I’m writing is for a competition, full orchestra with 2 percussionists available. I’m reading that it’s not possible to change unpitched percussion staves to pitched ones. Does that mean things like the image below are not yet possible in Dorico?
If not, does anyone have any workarounds? This is the look I prefer for percussion, 5-line staves that simply have text descriptions as to what should be played at that time.
Any help would be appreciated.
What you can do is to simply use different noteheads for those “unpitched” instruments. Right-click and change the notehead to an X or whatever you want.
Create a new player.
Add a Percussion Kit that houses your unpitched percussion instruments, and set it to show as a five-line stave.
Add whatever pitched percussion instruments you like to the same player.
Job done.
You want to have two instruments assigned to one of your percussion players, but having pitched and unpitched play simultaneously as shown in your post would be problematic (both from a notational and from a physical standpoint, I would think).
Derrek, your Suspended Cymbal is a bad choice - it will only ever display as a one-line stave. You can, of course, create an empty Percussion Kit that displays as a five line stave, and add (just) a Suspended Cymbal to it, and you’ll then be closer to what the OP’s after 
Thanks, pianoleo. That did it! So now I write in Galley view for the different staves and in Page view it automatically switches the instrument! Is there another way of changing instruments? One way that doesn’t require switching to Galley view?
No, that’s how you need to do it. Galley View is best for writing anyways (IMO), as it allows you to focus on the flow of the music and leave the page layout and formatting for later.
That’s kind of too bad, coming from Finale. But I suppose once I work with it for a while it’ll make so much more sense to me.