Insert PDF as block in Rhino

I'd like to insert PDFs as blocks into rhino from an external file. You can do this within rhino and it creates a live link to the file. This can be handy for overlaying plotted drawings in the rhino environment.

I've been here: http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/trying-to-put-together-a-...

And I'm also aware of the Human component that produces a similar result.

The piece that I'm missing, is how you can define the block instance, so that I have something to "place". Can this be done via the SDK?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andrew Heumann on June 19, 2014 at 8:53am

there are some bugs with defining blocks from within a script.

http://discourse.mcneel.com/t/bug-blocks-created-through-scripting-...

You can see my example code at that link - it could probably be adapted to work with externally referenced files. However I'd recommend not using this method until the bug with programmatically-defined blocks is ironed out.

Your best bet may be to run a command macro. I've attached an example script that does this for you. There's some trickiness because the command for inserting a pdf changes slightly depending on whether or not that PDF has already been placed in the document before.

Attachments: