RhinoScript workshop

07-08 Abril 2008, 09:30-17:30h
Instructor: David Rutten, Robert McNeel & Associates

RhinoScript is a scripting language based on Microsoft's VBScript language.
With RhinoScript, you can quickly add functionality to Rhino, or automate repetitive tasks.

This is the ideal course for anyone looking to begin scripting and automating Rhino.
Course starts by explaining how VBScript works and then moves on to how VBScript is implemented in Rhino 4.0.

Course topics include:

1. Iteration
2. Deformation
3. Evolution
4. Recursion

David works through these subjects in the following order:

0. Introduction, a short listing of (im)possibilities and some case studies
of projects done with scripting.
1. The basics, variables, conditional evaluation (if..then logic).
2. Basic geometry transformations in Rhino, motion, rotation, scaling
3. Loops (if there is interest in this).
4. More geometry - this time, how to MAKE geometry, curves and lofts.
5. More geometry - meshes now, how to change different properties of a mesh
(vertices, texture coordinates, colours, quads and triangles).
6. The concept of recursion.
Each section deals with curves, primitives, surfaces and meshes.

In addition, there will be an overview of:

Monkey script editor
Monkey is a new RhinoScript editor that exposes many standard programming environment features such as codeblocks, syntax highlighting, auto-formatting, advanced find/replace and debugging. Monkey also includes a standalone application which compiles RhinoScript *.rvb files into *.rhp plugins.

Explicit History plug-in
Rhino 4.0 came with a basic history feature build-in, which is a non-intrusive layer around the workflow that allows for automatic updates of certain modeling steps. The current implementation of History in Rhino4 is implicit, that is: it is recorded as you go. This means there is no additional overhead required at model-time which is exactly the sort of thing we would like to see in Rhino: more features, no additional limitations. However, implicit history cannot do some things which are possible with explicitly defined history.