Shortest Walk Tapered Branching Script

This is the script of Daniel Abalde's Peacock tapered offset post, here:

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/photo/the-variable-offset-component-sp...

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on May 13, 2016 at 11:45pm

What are your versions of Windows and bit depth (32/64) and Rhino and Grasshopper versions? This is a general problem that I'm no expert in.

Permalink Reply by insilico on May 15, 2016 at 8:03am

Thank you again.

OS is Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

Rhino is version 5 64 bit.

Grashoppper is version 0.9.0076, the latest version at this moment.

Maybe Tetgen is not build for 64 bit and it might be related. I will struggle a bit more and make new thread if it wont work.

Thank you for all your comment.

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on May 15, 2016 at 4:32pm

I'm using the same system. It's clearly not a Tetgen issue. Can you get a Python component to:

print "Hello world!"

...and get that as output?

Permalink Reply by insilico on May 15, 2016 at 11:30pm

I see, I am comparatively new to GH and completely new to Python. Now I tried the Hello world test and it worked properly... very strange...

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on May 16, 2016 at 4:49pm

OK, excellent, this I can help with then, and thanks to your screenshot I can see you are still using an old version of my script that required a disk file to be saved manually. See my link above and grab the newer version that simply accepts a mesh as input. I can't see the whole error message from the old script in your crop, but it may be not a core Python installation issue at all, just a lack of proper path to a disk file, and perhaps Tetgen itself being not found properly. Now you know how to see specific Python errors and how to view the code, so that's half way there.

There's two more secrets about Python and that's how you must zoom in on the Grasshopper canvas to add and remove inputs/outputs, and that inputs have right click options that are necessary to get right when writing a script and debugging it.

Oh, the error is the same as you pasted above, so is still confusing, so test if it works with the newer script. Looking closer the error did mention my line 13, not just Python crap, and line 13 contains the file access so it sounds like a simple file mismatch, despite the library error obscurity.

Permalink Reply by insilico on May 17, 2016 at 3:19am

I really appreciate Nik, and sorry for continuing this low level question...

As you suggested, I brought new version script as below. The mesh input is seemingly solved but now I guess the problem is maybe Tetgen is not working properly.

The reason why I think Tetgen is not working is that now I have put Tetgen files in C drive directory but the Python error shown in the photo above stays identical even if I removed all the Tetgen files from the directory.

Actually this is my first experience to compile some application like this so there might be some basic mistake in the procedure. I compiled downloaded Tetgen files with using Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express and it was successfully built. Then I placed the produced files as the photo below. These are files produced as Debug folder as the result of compilation and I placed them into this Tetgen directory I prepared in C drive.

Another suspicious point is that if I double click the compiled Tetgen.exe file highlighted in the photo above, it freezes and no console window or something pops up. Is this strange phenomenon? I rebuilt it but the phenomenon stays same...

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on May 18, 2016 at 3:24am

Though I did compile Tetgen once the specifics I don't remember, and it took considerable tweaking that I found instructions on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR5k_al4cQw

I only compiled once to try an older version to see if a Voronoi bug was recent, but it was the same, so I tossed it.

But normally I just download a binary:

https://github.com/JuliaGeometry/tetgen.dependency

Indeed double clicking Tetgen merely closes its brief CMD window but typing CMD into the Start Menu to manually invoke a CMD window lets you test Tetgen which then spits out its flag options:

Permalink Reply by insilico on May 19, 2016 at 3:35am

Thank you again for your comment and links.

I downloaded the binary and tried to run it via CMD, then it couldn't run. So I thought there is some other essential or compatibility problem in relation with this PC ,brought my old laptop and it could run tetgen in CMD.

On the laptop your definition is running too and now I can see coral bunny! There are still some minor errors but I will try to massage them for a while. Let me ask again when some questions comes up. Thank you for your kindness and patience:)

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on May 19, 2016 at 3:59am

Will the old laptop also run a copy of your compiled version?

What does the CMD console window *say* when you execute either version of Tetgen by typing "tetgen" after using "cd" to enter its directory?

Also try right click running the CMD console with As Administrator turned on. Is it permissions, I wonder? Quite disturbing. I'd like for my scripts to work for clients the first time, eh?

Permalink Reply by insilico on May 19, 2016 at 6:24am

The compiled version of Tetgen couldn't run in both iMac(the main machine I was using) and old laptop saying the error message below so it was crap.

''Tetgen is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or bach file."

If I try to execute the downloaded binary version via CMD in iMac. There is somehow no comment comming out as the photo below. Tetgen.exe is recognized in directory if I hit dir in CMD. Running CMD as admin and unblocking all files didn't make change so it is strange. Only difference I can imagine is iMac's windows is run through bootcamp.

Anyway the laptop has enough performance so it should be alright! Thank you.