RhinoPython: may the source be with you!

written by Graham Knapp on 2019-05-12

Hello everyone,

I wrote a script to help me code in python and learn RhinoCommon and decided to share it with you 😜

As you may know, the rhinoscriptsyntax library is written in Python and uses rhinocommon functions, also in Python, under the hood. In order to look up the underlying code you can open up the full python file, you can use the inspect module or you can save the script below to your computer and run it each time you want to look up a particular function. For instance if you search for ‘bounding’ you get the following options:

Search and select dialog box for library function

And by clicking on the 3rd option you get the underlying source code, which you can read in the box, copy elsewhere, …

Source code view for library function

from inspect import getsource, getmembers, isfunction

import rhinoscriptsyntax as rs

""" Script to view the source code for rhinoscript 
modules in Rhino 5 + 6 By Graham Knapp for personal 
use and for the McNeel Discourse forums
13/6/2019
"""


def get_source():
    search_term = rs.StringBox(
        'Function name to search for',
        title='rhinoscriptsyntax'
    ).lower()
    if not search_term:
        return
    # (tuples of name, fuction)
    functions = {name: obj for name, obj in getmembers(rs)
                 if isfunction(obj)
                 and search_term in name.lower()}
    if not functions:
        return
    selected = rs.ListBox(functions.keys(),
                          title='rhinoscriptsyntax'
                          )
    if not selected:
        return

    the_source = getsource(functions[selected])
    box_result = rs.EditBox(the_source,
                message='Press OK to copy to clipboard',
                title='Use the source')
    if box_result:
        rs.ClipboardText(box_result)

    return box_result


if __name__ == '__main__':
    get_source()

python rhino-3d