Getting started for developers

Welcome Developers! 🚀

Building BHoM from Source

Please follow the steps below:

1. Use git clone (or use GitHub desktop) to download the repositories in the list below.
2. Use your preferred IDE to build the solutions in the order as they appear below. We recommend Visual Studio Community.

🚩 Note: Build order 🚩

Choose, clone and build the repos in the order specified below.

Once you have built everything you need, you must re-build BHoM_UI. This is because BHoM_UI triggers a process that distributes all compiled dlls in the right UI folders.

This means that every time you change your code and recompile a Toolkit, you have to recompile also BHoM_UI for the changes to appear in your UI of choice (be it Rhino, Dynamo, others).

🔰 Pro tip - debugging and rebuild🔰

When developing a Toolkit, in order to reduce rebuild iterations, you might want to:

1. Rebuild your Toolkit
2. Rebuild BHoM_UI
3. Start Debugging your Toolkit with an UI application attached.

The last step will fire up your UI application and you will be able to modify the code while debugging, on-the-fly (just press the Pause button in Visual Studio).

Note that not all IDEs support this (notably, not the Express editions of Visual Studio – only the Community ones do).

An alternative that always works is, after steps 1 and 2 above, simply fire up your UI application and attach to its process. This way you will be able to follow code execution and check exceptions; however, this does not allow for code modification while debugging.

Mandatory base repos 🔴

Main repos

• BHoM
• BHoM_Engine
• Mongo_Toolkit
• BHoM_Adapter (one of the Projects there, "File_Adapter" requires Mongo_Toolkit; dependecy will be removed soon)
• BHoM_UI

User interface(s)

Depending on the User interface software you want to use, you might want to build one or more of the following:

• Rhinoceros_Toolkit
• Grasshopper_Toolkit (requires Rhinoceros_Toolkit)
• Excel_Toolkit
• Dynamo_Toolkit

Optional base repos 🔵

These repos are sometimes used as stand-alone, and sometimes are also referenced by other repos.

You might find them useful 🚀

• BHoM_Datasets - makes Datasets available (some test scripts might be using them)
• Socket_Toolkit - send messages through Sockets. Some toolkits use this.
• Mongo_Toolkit - database connection. Some toolkits use this.
• Versioning_Toolkit - allows retro-compatibility of components (auto upgrade to newest version).

Toolkits 🌍

Toolkits provide the connection to other software.

Clone and build any toolkit you want to use!

Some examples:

• For FEA analysis
  • Robot_Toolkit (for students, Robot offers a free version)
  • GSA_Toolkit
  • ETABS_Toolkit
  • Many others avaiable!
• Others:
  • Speckle_Toolkit

Be sure to recompile BHoM_UI!

See 🚩the note above🚩.