Custom Components

Hi (David)

If one wants to try and fiddle with making custom components in Visual Studio C#, do you have any template projects for setting that up?!
Or any guidelines or references one can look into!?

It would be a great help to have some working C# project example. Like being able to look into the source of one of the simple components like line by two points?!

Do you think you could find time to supply somthing like that?!
cheers / Jes

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 22, 2010 at 5:43am

Hi Jes,

I'd strongly recommend waiting until Grasshopper 0.7 is released (the next version). A lot of things will change which will render all components stale.

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

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on March 22, 2010 at 6:10am

Permalink Reply by Pep Tornabell on March 22, 2010 at 6:21am

gorgeous

Permalink Reply by Jes Tonsgaard on March 22, 2010 at 6:28am

hehe... thanks for useful info!

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 22, 2010 at 9:18am

Cute.

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

Permalink Reply by Evert Amador on March 22, 2010 at 6:42am

Hi David,

Will GH0.7 released be based on RhinoCommon?

Cheers

Evert

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 22, 2010 at 9:22am

Yes. If we want to keep Grasshopper 0.7 loadable on Rhino4, we cannot switch to RhinoCommon completely, so 0.7 will most likely be based on both the old and the new SDK. But until we do shed our reliance on the old SDK completely, we won't be able to run on RhinoMac. But we haven't really gotten quite this far with the planning. I'm still in the process of converting all the classes from RMA.OpenNURBS into Rhino.Geometry, which is a big (and boring) job.

Components will definitely not survive this transition, but I'll do my best to keep legacy support for VB and C# scripts.

RhinoCommon is actually being developed at the same time as Grasshopper 0.7 and I pretty much run into missing functionality every hour or so. It's a long process, but hopefully it will bring large benefits to both Grasshopper and RhinoCommon.

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

Permalink Reply by Evert Amador on March 22, 2010 at 10:14am

Hi David,

Will we see a new IronPython component?

I'm starting to focus on CSharp scripts and was wondering if its better to put my effort on IronPython.

Cheers!

Evert

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 22, 2010 at 11:28am

I don't know. Probably. The new IronPython component will most likely be written by Steve Baer (just like the first one).

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

Permalink Reply by Stan Carroll on March 24, 2010 at 9:26pm

Hey Jes,

In case you haven't found Giulio's site yet here is the link:
http://www.giuliopiacentino.com/grasshopper-tools/

Giulio has very graciously offered several C# components to anyone that can use them. Because it seems he has a generous spirit, it seems like he might be willing to give you a sample template to use as a "go by" . I am currently taking a C# class specifically for the purpose of writing GH components and have the same desire to see the C# code of an actual component to start to understand how it all might come together. You might contact Giulio to see if he is willing to share. I appreciate David's suggestion to wait until the next version release but I would prefer to proceed in an effort to start learning the process of writing C# components. All while realizing they may become obsolete after the new version is released.

Stan

Permalink Reply by Ben Sitler on March 25, 2010 at 12:25am

When I started looking into building my own components David suggested using Reflector from RedGate to disassemble the component .dll's, which proved to be an extremely useful resource, so Jes, perhaps you will find it helpful as well. It also was great for learning exactly how and what the current components do. David also gave me specific instructions for creating components, which I could forward if you are interested.

David, GH 0.7 won't be released for at least 6 more months, yeah?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 25, 2010 at 3:19am

Hi Ben,

I'm aiming to have a build of 0.7 come May, as I'd like to use it in the next Workshop cycle in London. I'm not sure if I'll be able to release a public version before then though.

One of the things I'd like to do in the future is have a second kind of component. Something in between hard-coded components and Script components. Basically a component that carries its own source code along with it and compiles itself whenever necessary. This would also allow people to look at and change the logic inside a lot of standard components.

But it's way lower on the list than 0.7, Clusters and the RCP.

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