algorithmic modeling for Rhino
Hi,
Im working with connecting GH to Excel and have found the previous discussions very useful. I have been using the VB node posted over at Liquid Tectonics and had success until I updated to the latest GH version recently. I am still able to use a excel spreadsheet to drive Rhino geometry, but my attempts to send data back to specific excel cells has failed. I'm wondering if this is due to something in the new version. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
Nick
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PS, This is the code Im using to send back to excel.
Dim xlApp As Object
''Grab a running instance of Excel
xlApp = System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetActiveObject("Excel.Application")
''send volume and area to Excel
xlApp.range("B12").Value = volume
xlApp.range("B13").Value = area
Nick
Yes Hashim!
P.A.E represent.
N
I believe that changes in the GH scripting note have caused a slightly different interaction with the Excel COM dll than what was before. Most of the objects/methods are fine, but you have to pay a little closer attention to what type is really being returned or the exact type that you're working with. I'll explain below (BTW, this is in C# and I don't know if the VB.Net syntax/compiler causes things to behave differently).
The "old" way of doing things was fairly simple straight forward syntax (this assumes you already have gotten your workbook and worksheet references).
//Retrieve data from a given cell
someData = myWorkSheet.Cells[x,y];
// Assign data to a given cell
myWorkSheet.Cells[x,y].Value = someData;
Unfortunately this no longer works because of the object type that the mySheet.Cells[x,y] returns, which is akin to a base COM object type. So in order to be able to do anything with this, you'll need to cast the result of Cells as a range, like so.
Range cellData = (Range)myWorkSheet.Cells[x,y];
Now that you actually have a data type that you can work with, you'd think you can just use the Value property as you could before, but not really. For reasons unknown to me (and maybe this is just a C# thing), but there are separate methods for getting and setting a value; get_Value and set_Value* respectively. I will note that I did not see these pop up with intellisense in the GH editor, but it did within Visual Studio. So now the syntax above would expand to something like this.
Range cellData = (Range)myWorkSheet.Cells[x,y];
theRealData = cellData.get_Value();
To make things even trickier, there is one argument to the get_Value method of RangeValueDataType. 99.9% of the time, you won't care what that RangeValueDataType is, and because this is a COM dll, that argument is technically optional. This is definitely where there's likely going to be a C#/VB.Net split. C# does not have the concept of optional arguments, so you have to supply something. VB does, so you can get away with calling get_Value without any arguements. In order to mimic this behavior in C# you'd have to do something like this.
Range cellData = (Range)myWorkSheet.Cells[x,y];
theRealData = cellData.get_Value(System.Reflection.Missing.Value);
Hopefully that helps in actually getting to the data within Excel. One last thing though. The result of get_Value is an object, so you should probably cast that into the specific type that you're looking for. My recommendation for this is that you cast the result of get_Value as a string (which its pretty much guaranteed to be), then use Parse functions for types like int and double. See the code below (with some graceful failure for good measure).
Range cellData = (Range)myWorkSheet.Cells[x,y];
string theRealData = (string)cellData.get_Value(System.Reflection.Missing.Value);
try{
double myDoubleFromExcel = double.Parse(theRealData);
}
catch(Exception e){
Print(string.Format("{0} from Excel could not be parsed as a double.", theRealData));
return;
}
*looking over my notes, I don't explicitly say anything about set_Value, but I would be extremely surprised if A) it wasn't there, and B) its structure didn't mimic get_Value. There is a possibility though, so if what I mentioned doesn't hold true for set_Value, don't say I didn't give you a heads up.
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