ISO Developer for Rhino Plugin

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1

Hello everyone!
I hope you are good,
this is my first post even if I have been a Rhino user for a good decade

I have an idea of a plugin for Rhino, I had it for years actually.
Talking to a developer friends, he thinks this is totally doable, but unfortunately he doesn’t have time to help me.

I have prepared a PDF with all steps I have in mind.
If executed as envisioned, it could reduce weeks of work to minutes (in my field of expertise).

I’m a designer and I have 0 coding experience hence I’m looking for support from the community to achieve my dream :slight_smile:

What would be the proper course of action?

thank you all for your support!

2

A few thoughts:

You haven’t even told us which industry the idea services, let alone what you’re trying to do. Grasshopper plugin to reorganize a model? Rhino plugin to write data out to CNC or analysis tools?

With very few exceptions, revealing the basics of an idea isn’t much of a risk. Why? Because if you implement it and publish the software, everyone will know that and more. If the idea is all the ‘secret sauce’ there is and it only takes a few days to write, there’s not much of a barrier to entry. Not knowing what’s in the PDF, I’m not asking you to publish that… the details of an implementation may be quite valuable.

What are you trying to do? Free plugin, commercial plugin?

What/who are you looking for? Partner? Employee? Just some business or technical advice?

How much effort do you anticipate? Is this a weekend of scripting or a year of full-time development?

If you ask some specific questions you’ll probably get some good answers from this crowd.

3 Likes
3

Hi Nathan!
thank you for reaching out,
I realize I could have provided a little more details.

in a nut shell, below what I’m not sure is possible:

on an excel file we have a series of cells with text:

cell a1 says product A

cell a2 says product B

cell a3 says product C

Product A is a 3D module of an object

Product B is another 3D module of an object

Product C is a third 3D module of an object

the plug in will read the excel list, based on Product A name it will look for the Product A 3D file (we’ll define folder structure) and it will load the 3D product in Rhino.

the same is repeated for Product B and C.

once all files have been loaded, it will show them based on the order provided on the excel file. In our case, A before B before C.

each Product will have some metadata associated to it , for instance:
“Product name”
“size (s/m/l)”

This metadata will show up on a layout page following the order to the excel file

If the list was :

cell a1 says product C

cell a2 says product B

cell a3 says product A

it will show them based on the order provided on the excel file.

In this second case, C before B before A.

each Product will have some metadata associated to it , for instance:
“Product name”
“size (s/m/l)”

This metadata will show up on a layout following the order to the excel file

I have simplified the execution to show the basic concept :slight_smile:

What/who are you looking for? Partner? Employee? Just some business or technical advice?
I need someone to write the code for me and then provide me the keys of the software.
If there are updates to the software to make in the future, I’ll connect with him to make them.

How much effort do you anticipate? Is this a weekend of scripting or a year of full-time development?
this is an hard questions as I don’t have experience in coding.
I don’t think is is extremetly hard (might I might be very wrong).
Maybe 10 - 20 h of work?

4

I’m having trouble visualizing these steps and where some of the data comes from in detail.

The metadata comes from the 3dm or the xls? Where is the layout? Is it a pdf or something of the Rhino model, modified in some way based on the Excel data?
(and etc. for the details of other steps, this is still a bit vague)

It sounds like you’re producing some kind of customer quote sheet with images of the product or something similar.

I don’t see how this process could take “weeks of work” done manually so there must be more to it.

Two observations:

  1. It does like something that can be easily automated. There are ways to run Excel from Rhino and vice versa (the Rhino from Excel being really clunky though unless they’ve fixed the early-bind-Rhino-variables-in-VBA bug from a few years back). If doing this is really weeks of work without designer judgment required frequently during the process then you should definitely pursue automation.

  2. It sounds specific to your company and use case, not a general purpose tool

5

I can do this no problem. Message me for a quote.

Alternatively please at least let myself and others know which registered charity you’re asking us to do this work for free for.

6

From the 3dm.
Each product will be saved as a separate .3dm file.
example:
Product A is a 3dm file.
this file has metadata contained such as:
Product Name: bottle
Size: 100ml

On the excel file we have on cell A1 “bottle”

The plugin reads bottle on A1, looks for the 3d files named “bottle” and print on a Layout : Bottle - 100ml

the layout is in Rhino. This is explained on the PDF :slight_smile:

There is definetly more to it

it is :slight_smile:

I’ll send you a DM if you are ok! We can talk more if you are interested

7

Hi! sure, let me send you a DM, I could share other details :slight_smile:

This is private project, it is not for a charity or at least not for now :slight_smile:

8

Fantastic Marco.