Automate Rhino using RhinoCommon, from an external IDE?

Rhino Developer
1

I am starting a small toy manufacturing business, and have chosen Rhino for my CAD needs, mostly because of its scriptability.

While RhinoPython is great (I create all prod CAD objects from scratch using RhinoPython, only use UI for exploration), I am really missing the ability to run scripts from an external application, either using Python or .NET

That ability would give me the following goodies I’ve started to take for granted in modern scripting languages:

  1. Nicer development flow
    1.1. Context-dependent autocomplete (variable names, available object methods, etc)
    1.2. Poking around with a REPL in the context created by the script so far

  2. Nicer debugging flow: ability to stop at a breakpoint, or auto-stop on error, and be able to poke around with a REPL in that context

  3. Automated testing of code portions/integration

I don’t really care if the language for that would be Python or .NET (I am aware of the COM/RhinoScript option, but that is so clunky). If the automation uses .NET, I’d use MATLAB to instantly get all of the above (like here), and if it uses Python, I’d use something like PyCharm to achieve the same aim.

Is there a way of achieving that, or any plans for doing so?

For example, could I load RhinoCommon as a library into my Python IDE, and write the code there, creating .NET objects, and only run the code in Rhino as a last step, just to add the resulting objects to the Rhino document (or just export directly to STL)?

I’ve already bought Rhino so it’s not a question of evading the license fee :), just of getting a smooth, robust workflow.

Sorry for the long post, and thanks a lot for reading.

2

Update: after playing around a bit, I can at least get the interactive debug functionality by using Eclipse/pyDev, which also helps a bit (not all the way) with point 1 (though Rhino rendering hangs when doing that, so interactive command evaluation is not as useful as it could be).

Is there/could there be a better way still?

Thanks a lot,
E.