Change GH Canvas

It's frustrating the site search engine is down, so I have to ask these stupid questions here...

Here it is: is there an option to change the canvas in the GH window? I mean, the beige canvas with a rectangular grid. Is there a way I can replace it with something else?

Thanks.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on July 22, 2013 at 3:33pm

Hi Darren,

it is possible, a lot of canvas properties are available via the Grasshopper SDK at runtime and they can also be adjusted in the settings file. The problem editing the settings file is that it only works if Grasshopper is not running. Incidentally, the Canvas background colour is grey, not beige. If it looks beige then your screen is not properly calibrated.

To edit the relevant settings file, do the following:

Start Rhino and Grasshopper.
In the Grasshopper File menu, go to the Special Folders sub menu and pick the Settings folder.
Close all instances of Rhino and Grasshopper.
Open grasshopper_gui.xml in a plain text editor such as NotePad.
You can modify values, but note that certain values are not possible and may result in weird crashes.
Colours are always specified as 4 semi-colon separated numbers. The first number is the alpha value, then red, green and blue. Valid values for each are 0~255.
Most settings in this file deal with the colours of component capsules. However there are also some settings that start with "canvas_" and "wire_". These settings affect the canvas and connector wires.

Once you've saved the xml file with some changes, restart Rhino+Grasshopper to see the difference.

I once posted a GH file with a VB component which could modify the settings in real-time but I can't find it now.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Tirol, Austria

Permalink Reply by Darren Chang on July 22, 2013 at 3:46pm