I am currently working on a workflow that integrates Rhino/Grasshopper with ROS2, and I would appreciate some guidance on the next step.
My objective is to publish digital geometry generated in Grasshopper to another machine using ROS2.
So far, I have completed the following steps:
I created a Grasshopper program that generates a digital shape in Rhino.
The geometry is sliced, and I extract the coordinates of the points in XYZ format for each slice.
On a separate machine, I have implemented a ROS2 subscriber that is ready to receive incoming data.
The challenge I am facing is the following:
I am not sure how to implement a ROS2 publisher that sends the XYZ coordinate data directly from Grasshopper to the other machine.
An important requirement of my project is that C++ is critical, because the final application needs to support real-time communication and execution.
My main questions are:
What is the recommended architecture for publishing data from Grasshopper/Rhino to ROS2?
Is it possible to implement a ROS2 publisher in C++ that interfaces with Grasshopper, or should Grasshopper export the data to an external C++ ROS2 node?
Are there any existing plugins, libraries, or example workflows demonstrating communication between Grasshopper and ROS2?
In summary, I already generate the XYZ coordinate data in Grasshopper, and I have a ROS2 subscriber running on another machine. My remaining task is to implement the ROS2 publisher connected to Grasshopper.
Any suggestions, references, or example implementations would be greatly appreciated.
Hi, @Ame_Ali. Not being a developer myself, I’m replying to your request to bump this subject again. Your post seems like a good use case for asking AI for general direction and code starting points. I had some success copying/pasting your exact post into Grok, though you may want to choose a code-based LLM like Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, or similar. Have you tried that yet?
Thank you very much, and I apologize for the late reply.
Using LLMs is a good approach, especially if you clearly know the direction in which you want the solution to converge. In this work, a C# ROS 2 publisher is required, which needs to be integrated as a plugin within Grasshopper. Additionally, a ROS 2 package must be developed to receive the digital waypoints.
It is important that the communication protocol guarantees the correct sequencing of data. I found this approach effective, as it allows sending large trajectories—exceeding 100k points.
I have successfully integrated this setup with ROS 2. One important consideration is that if you are using Rhino on Windows, ROS 2 should run in WSL. The communication between them can be somewhat tricky, but it is manageable.
At this stage, I have a working ROS 2 plugin that allows direct publishing from Grasshopper, enabling the robot to start printing immediately.
