Guide to creating custom grasshopper 0.6.X components

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Permalink Reply by taz on March 31, 2010 at 9:08pm

Whoa!

I think you just opened a GH custom component floodgate (I can hear the rushing water bearing down...).

Really cool.

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Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on April 1, 2010 at 3:37am

I think Taz has a point.

Would it be prudent to agree to a TabName that Custom components are stored in. That way if anyone uses everyone else's components there is some kind of logic and order to it.

Something like Plug-Ins or Add-Ins or even simply Custom

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on April 1, 2010 at 4:03am

I started 'Extra' to put Kangaroo in. Still plenty of space over there!

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Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on April 1, 2010 at 5:03am

I'm following suit for Geometry Gym tools with 'Extra' unless agreement is reached on something else.

Great work Ben, a very useful guide. I'm up and running with this now, and it works very well. I got referencing my Rhino plug-in dll working, which should get rid of some of the localized installation path issues (dependent on Windows version and language) users were seeing with the c# components. For some reason the symbols aren't loading for the grasshopper dll in my multi-project solution, so I can't debug into it but most of my code is in my dll so fingers crossed it's not really needed.

Thanks again,

Jon

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Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on April 7, 2010 at 12:16am

Well, I'm ready to release the first public beta of my GH plug-in, barring one of my components error which I can't seem to resolve.

The input is a list of OnGeometry (may be points, curves or breps), but I get an error about creating an Abstract Class when trying to retrieve a GH_GeometricGoo list.

Here's a sample of the code:
List restraints = new List();

if (DA.GetDataList(1, restraints))

It seems to be this 2nd line that is causing the problem.

Also, what is the best way to create a list of OnGeometry from a list of GH_GeometricGoo ?

Do I iterate through the list and CastTo OnGeometry (or a derived type) and add to a new list of type OnGeometry?

Thanks in advance for any assistance,

Jon

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Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on April 7, 2010 at 1:43am

Some further testing shows the code works fine if it is curves being read in.
It only seems to give an error if it is a point being read. I'm not sure if there is a work around?

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 7, 2010 at 3:47am

Oh I see the problem, you're getting GH_GeometricGoo, which is an abstract utility class. Kernel.Types.Point is so weird that it doesn't inherit from GH_GeometricGoo. You should use the interface IGH_GeometricGoo instead, that is the only guaranteed implementation.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

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Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on April 7, 2010 at 12:52pm

Thanks for your help David. That got it working.
Have just uploaded the installer so will put it through it's paces now.

Cheers,

Jon

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 7, 2010 at 3:44am

Are you defining a non-generic List? It should be:

List<IGH_GeometricGoo> restraints = new List<IGH_GeometricGoo>();


There is no short cut way to go from IGH_GeometricGoo to OnGeometry. Either you perform all the casts yourself (which is a lot of work) or you look around Grasshopper.Kernel.GH_Convert for useful functions (my recommendation, since those functions will be updated once new data types become available)

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

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Permalink Reply by taz on April 1, 2010 at 4:59pm

To continue with more stupid analogies, a free-for-all is the nature of the open source beast...

When I installed WeaverBird it took me a little while to find it because it was added to the existing Mesh panel (the opposite problem).

Unless Emperor David makes a decree, I don't know if there can be any real consensus.

But maybe David can allow users to customize panel layouts? It may not have been high on the To-Do list but maybe the priority is now a bit more urgent...

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 2, 2010 at 2:47am

Decree's don't work. If someone adds a single component that clearly belongs in the Curve.Primitive section, I think they should add it to that panel. If someone writes a suite of over 50 components, it probably warrants its own tab.

I specifically designed the Grasshopper SDK so that new tools could be merged into the application as though they are part of the core product.

I think making the UI customizable is the best way to go, but I'm not starting with that anytime soon. First RhinoCommon, then Clusters, then RCP.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

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Permalink Reply by kermin chok on April 2, 2010 at 8:35am

With regards to custom components, does anyone have a sense whether they are more stable or execute more quickly than say a VB or C# component within GH?

I can see the advantages of having custom components so you don't have to copy and paste VB/C# components between files and the code stays up to date but are there any specific speed/stability advantages?

Thanks.

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