Arbitrary debug output for grasshopper compo

Grasshopper Developer
, ,
1

Hi all,

I’m fairly new to grasshopper component development. I am trying to set arbitrary geometric or non-geometric objects as “debug outputs” of my components. This is to be used only through the development of the component.

What I have at the moment is a Generic parameter registered as below:

pManager.AddGenericParameter("Debug", "D", "Debug results.", GH_ParamAccess.list);

and a public property like this:

public object DebugOutputs { get; set; }

So for example I set the property to something arbitrarily like this:

// unionBlocks is a List<PolylineCurve>
DebugOutputs = unionBlocks;

which I pass to output of the component like this:

DA.SetData(1, solution.DebugOutputs);

On the grasshopper canvas then I have a separate C# component that casts the object to different things and outputs the results based on the object type. Something like this:

    private void RunScript(object x, object y, ref object a)
    {
        if(x is IList){

            var type = x.GetType();
            if (type.GetGenericArguments()[0] == typeof(PolylineCurve))
            {
                var list = x as List<PolylineCurve>;
                a = new DataTree<PolylineCurve>(list);
            }
            // so on and so forth
        }
        else
        {
            // get the type and cast it 
        }

    }

Before I go ahead and complete the code, I was wondering if there’s any better way for this already using vanilla grasshopper? I’ve looked at the GH_GeometricGoo class but that seems not quite the solution as the debug outputs can arbitrarily change (eg: polylines, points, meshes etc)

Thanks.
Hoss

2

As long as its about displaying geometrical data you could use pManager.AddGeometryParameter()
But note that some types do not derive from GeometryBase such as planes.

In general I think its not a good idea to implement something like this. Because you could introduce errors, which might have nothing in common with your implementation, but with the cast/conversion.

GH VS templates are designed not differ in between Debug and Release. I think this is a disadvantage.
So instead of using the DEBUG define you can create an own and do something like this:

// Comment out if not required (you can also define from the build command).
#define DEVOUT

#if DEVOUT
// Register parameters only for development
//pManager.Add(...)
//pManager.Add(...)
//pManager.Add(...)
#endif
// ...
#if DEVOUT
//DA.SetData(...)
//DA.SetData(...)
//DA.SetData(...)
#endif

If you wonder why this is better than an normal if and else, then the answer is that it only compiles if the flag is defined. But I would be careful and minimise using pre-processor directives, because you always want to test you production code, and not the test environment.