Questions: Quicker numerical input and a row-by-row table value usage

1) Is there a way to have a simple float (or integer) input? IE, one that I can edit with one click? Currently all of them require a right click, hover over 'values', then click on the edit box, then hit Commit.

I'm wondering how hard it would be to have an edit box which shows the number the user could click inside of then type in a new number, then
hit enter. :)

2) How would I go about using one line from a table and assign each field to a variable? Then, move a slider or something and use the values
from the next row?

background: I'm recreating elbows, Tees, and other fittings using paramatric scripts, then baking and exporting them. Here's one source
table, http://www.wardfittings.com/Assets/PDFs/0902CatalogColorOld.pdf
page 5, the uniform elbows.

Current Setup: the attached ghx file. Create a point at 0,5,0 in a blank document with units set to inches, then assign that point to the top
left 'Center Pnt' in the ghx file.

Current workflow:
a) Modify variables A, B, H, and Nominal Dia to match one line from the table in the linked PDF file, page 5, table of regular elbows.

b) Select the 'Nodes' and 'Surfaces' with a drag box
c) Click 'Bake'
d) Switch to Rhino window, do the 'sellast' command.
e) Drag baked objects along Y axis so the center point is at 0,0,0
f) Run 'Join'
g) Run 'Cap'
h) set the 'node' points to a layer called 'nodes'
i) set the surface to a layer called 'fit-3d'.
j) select the surfaces and nodes
k) export selected

This elbow that I'm doing only has 12 rows, so doing it the above method doesn't take THAT long. I'm also going to be doing a couple with larger
tables like the Tee on page 8, and in other spec files. As you can
imagine, entering in EACH value into a slider is a bit tedious.

I'd love to take the pdf table, run it through an OCR program to convert to excel, modify the headers so the ghx script knows what they are, then
paste it into grasshopper, or save it and have grasshopper read it, and
I be able to move a slider or something to to select one line at a time.

Has anyone done something similar? ie: assigned one row in a table to a predefined set of variables, each variable coming from one field in the row?

Thanks for taking the time to read this message. :)

I'm making a rhino script to do steps d-k, so that part will be much faster.

-Suthern

Attachments:

WardMallable150_elbow.ghx, 211 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Nathan Sutherland on May 21, 2010 at 10:20am

I've completed a macro covering steps d to k. I know the generated part surfaces does not exactly match that depicted in the PDF file, no problem. My main concern is the exact placement of the points, and a surface to provide a visual reminder of what part is there. :)

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