Back to all discussions

  •   over 10 years ago

data viz and reporting for Dynamo + GH

Looking to make a data visualization plug-in for Dynamo/GH. Since I am more of a Python person I think we could use jinja2 for template engine. Why? I wanted to use d3.js to derive the visualizations and deliver all of it via a web browser. For that I was thinking a Chromium Browser (cef) in wpf. Now, I know I am probably making this all awfully complicated but i am here to listen to ideas. I got some of it started but would need help putting the pieces together. Thanks!
Ps. The end result would be a set of components/nodes that allows for data set visualization (charts etc), but built on top of web browser so fully interactive and easily saved as reports etc.

  • 7 comments

  •   •   over 10 years ago

    Just successfully got a WPF window launched from a Dynamo zero-touch library. So that's something :)

  •   •   over 10 years ago

    We have a view extension framework that would be perfect for this Konrad. And we've talked a lot about having a results visualization component inside the Dynamo UI that uses web technologies. I wasn't familiar with Cef, but I'd be happy to take a crack at building a Cef-based view in the Dynamo app, if you want to work on the data viz part.

  •   •   over 10 years ago

    Andrew, that's better than what I was able to do :-)
    Ian, totally open to this idea. I am not an expert with D3.js but I was going to volunteer to build that part of it anyways - got to start somewhere. :-)

  •   •   over 10 years ago

    Also, Andrew - cef had some weird constraints when I was doing one of the tutorials with it. Couldn't compile for "any CPU" (x64 worked though) and could only build against .NET 4.0 (i know Dynamo libraries are all 4.5 now). You think that will be an issue? We could of course try just the good old Windows Forms and IE (web browser control?)....let me know what you think.

  •   •   over 10 years ago

    I've actually had pretty good results with the basic IE web browser control... we'll see. A difficulty with WPF that is a consideration (or maybe just me being dumb) is that I can't launch a WPF standalone window unless I pop it onto its own thread - which makes accessing/manipulating its contents from dynamo a little harder. @ian - does view extension framework support floating windows, or just stuff inside the dynamo graph UI?

  •   •   over 10 years ago

    The ViewExtension framework gives you access to the DynamoView. I'm guessing your window wants to be modeless, so you can set the Owner of the window to the DynamoView and use Window.Show.

  •   •   over 10 years ago

    cool! would love to see an example

Comments are closed.