Using RhinoInside in SolidWorks

Rhino.Inside
1

Hi guys,

Does anybody have a starting example to use RhinoInside for SolidWorks?
Any info is appreciated.

Thanks,
Dmitriy

2

Can you explain what you mean?

3

The project is open source. So, if anyone has access to the Solidworks C# SDK, then a Rhino.Inside project could be attempted. It would be interesting to see if it worked.

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4

Can you explain what it is? and how to set it up?

5

Hi Zale_orcid, thanks for your interest.

The examples for Rhino.Inside can be found here rhino-developer-samples/rhino.inside at 7 · mcneel/rhino-developer-samples · GitHub

The Rhino.Inside® technology allows Rhino and Grasshopper to be embedded within other products. It may be possible to:

  • Starting Rhino and Grasshopper as an add in another product.
  • Call directly into the host’s native APIs from a Grasshopper or Rhino plugin.
  • Access Rhino’s APIs through the host application.
  • Grasshopper definitions can be opened and previewed in Rhino within the same process as the parent.
  • Object can be natively created by Rhino or Grasshopper within the parent product.
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6

Out of curiosity, has there been any progress with regards to a rhino inside solidworks workflow?
Thanks!

7

There have been some rumblings in Rhino.Inside.Autocad, haven’t seen or heard of any implementations for Solidworks.

8

Thanks Japhy. Would be a beautiful thing to see the power of Rhino inside Solidworks! Maybe one day

9

I’m brand new to Rhino.Inside and don’t know the ins and outs yet. I’ve only just started messing around with this. I was able to adapt the AutoCAD sample project to get Rhino to load from within SOLIDWORKS. I just started with a new template SOLIDWORKS plug-in.

I’m using SOLIDWORKS 2023, but I would imagine this would work for earlier versions as well.

Feel free to start from here and adapt as needed.

Add to SwAddin Local Variables:

		private Rhino.Runtime.InProcess.RhinoCore m_RhinoCore;
		static readonly string SystemDir = (string)Microsoft.Win32.Registry.GetValue
		(
		  @"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\McNeel\Rhinoceros\7.0\Install", "Path",
		  Path.Combine(System.Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.ProgramFiles), "Rhino WIP", "System")
		);

Add to ConnectToSW:

			ResolveEventHandler OnRhinoCommonResolve = null;
			AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyResolve += OnRhinoCommonResolve = (sender, args) =>
			{
				const string rhinoCommonAssemblyName = "RhinoCommon";
				var assembly_name = new AssemblyName(args.Name).Name;

				if (assembly_name != rhinoCommonAssemblyName)
					return null;

				AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyResolve -= OnRhinoCommonResolve;
				return Assembly.LoadFrom(Path.Combine(SystemDir, rhinoCommonAssemblyName + ".dll"));
			};

Add to DisconnectFromSW:

			try
			{
				m_RhinoCore?.Dispose();
				m_RhinoCore = null;
			}
			catch
			{
				// ignored
			}

I just added a new button to the command manager that calls this function as it’s callback:

		public void OpenRhino()
		{
			// Load Rhino
			try
			{
				// Sceme
				string SchemeName = $"Inside-SwAddin-0.0.0.1";

				// Window handle
				IntPtr hWnd = IntPtr.Zero;
				ModelDoc2 swModelDoc = iSwApp.ActiveDoc as ModelDoc2;
				if (swModelDoc != null)
				{
					ModelView swModelView = swModelDoc.ActiveView as ModelView;
					if (swModelView != null)
                    {
						hWnd = (IntPtr)swModelView.GetViewHWndx64();
                    }
				}

				// Allocate the Rhino core
				m_RhinoCore = new Rhino.Runtime.InProcess.RhinoCore(new[] { $"/scheme={SchemeName}", "/safemode", "/nosplash" }, Rhino.Runtime.InProcess.WindowStyle.Normal, hWnd);
			}
			catch
			{
				// ignored
			}
		}

I probably added more project references than needed (this project actually started with me looking at RhinoInside.Revit). You may not need all of these, but I added references to the following DLLs from the Rhino System folder:

  • Eto
  • Eto.Wpf
  • Rhino.UI
  • RhinoCommon
  • RhinoWindows

-Luke

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