Script editor for Grasshopper

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ángel Linares on May 6, 2010 at 1:27pm

If you make double click on VB.Net Component grasshopper will open an editor. It's not like Monkey but is good enough to make some simple code.

If you look for a better tool you will need Microsoft Visual Studio ;)

Best Regards.

Permalink Reply by Deepthi on May 7, 2010 at 3:54am

Thanks Angel!
Yeah my tutor had a look at the editor in Gh and said this lacks many editing options, you should try and find out which other one people generally use. Thats why I posted a question here.

Permalink Reply by Rajaa Issa on May 7, 2010 at 7:34am

Hi Deepthi,

You can use the free express version of visual studio. Instructions are found in:
http://wiki.mcneel.com/developer/dotnetexpresseditions

Of course, VS provides much better debugging environment, but the GH component can be used just fine in most cases. here is a good strategy to work with GH scripting (and is good practice to code with any other environment for that matter):

- Build your code incrementally and test it a lot. Avoid writing big chunk of code and test all at once.
- Isolate functionality in separate functions whenever possible and test each function as you go.
- Use the Print(...) function to output data to the out window to check the values.

When I do the above, I rarely find a need to go to VS for debugging.

I hope this is helpful.

-Rajaa

Permalink Reply by Deepthi on May 7, 2010 at 11:30am

Wow that was so kind of you! It is very much helpful to me because I am a beginner & have never done coding before.
Thank you

Permalink Reply by Damien Alomar on May 7, 2010 at 7:35am

I'd say there are only a hand full of people that are using anything but the GH editor for GH scripts, but that's just my impression. I'd highly recommend downloading Visual Studio express if you can. It is a significantly better editor and I find myself more productive when I use it. The only downfall is that you can't really import anything that was written from an external source. You have to manually copy and paste it back into GH.

Permalink Reply by Deepthi on May 7, 2010 at 11:30am

Thanks Damien

Permalink Reply by Suryansh Chandra on May 7, 2010 at 10:50am

I personally use the built in editor almost all the time, despite the very stunted debugging ability, and somewhat misleading intellisense. I find it extremely useful to be able to interact with GH geometry directly, as the code ultimately can only be executed by the built-in editor. So even if you use VS Studio/Express, it will merely serve the purpose of better intellisense. I am yet to figure out how to use VS to debug if the problem is not in the syntax, but entirely in the geometry or the what I'm doing with it.

Permalink Reply by Deepthi on May 7, 2010 at 11:31am

Thanks Suryansh. Thats so true...