Getting Started
Installation
The preferred way to install compas_cem is to build it from source in only five simple steps.
1. Create a virtual environment
First, create and activate a new Anaconda environment from your command line.
The only dependencies are python, COMPAS, and rtree.
conda create -n cem python=3.7 COMPAS=0.16.2 rtree=0.9.4
conda activate cem
Note
Make sure you install python version 3.7, COMPAS version
0.16.4, and rtree version 0.9.4. In this case, the name of the
new environment will be cem but feel free the change it to your liking.
2. Clone the compas_cem repo
We need to fetch compas_cem from Github. Move to the folder
where you want to store it clone the source repository. For example, if you are
a macOS user and wish to put it in a pre-existing ~/code/ folder:
cd ~/code/
git clone https://github.com/arpastrana/compas_cem.git
3. Install compas_cem from source
Next, move into the the repository’s folder (the one we’ve just cloned) and
install compas_cem as an editable package via pip:
cd compas_cem
pip install -e .
4. Verify your installation
To double-check that everything is up and running, type the following in the command line and hit enter:
python -c "import compas_cem"
If no errors show up, celebrate 🎉! You have a working installation of
compas_cem.
5. Optional Dependencies
As a CAD-agnostic framework, COMPAS has developed compas_viewers, a
standalone package to display 3d geometry from the command line. This is pretty
helpful when you want to orbit and zoom around a form-found model without
resorting to a full-blown CAD software like Rhino.
Some of the examples presented here depend on compas_viewers to display a form-found structure. However, the viewers package is entirely
optional, and is not required for compas_cem internals to operate.
If you are still interested in installing compas_viewers, please follow the
instructions provided in this repo.
Linking compas_cem to Rhino and Grasshopper
There will be times when modeling a complex structure is easier to do with a few
mouse-clicks instead of a hundred lines of code. COMPAS enables connecting
compas_cem to Rhino and Grasshopper to access (almost) all of its
functionality from the inside.
To link it, follow the next three steps from the command line:
Note
Make sure that we are in the cem anaconda environment we created
earlier while we do this.
1. Remove any leftovers
In case there was an older COMPAS version linked to Rhino.
python -m compas_rhino.uninstall
2. Link compas_cem
Let’s connect compas_cem, compas_rhino and compas_ghpython to
Rhino. If you were wondering, the last two come with a default COMPAS installation.
Type in your command line:
python -m compas_rhino.install -p compas_cem compas_rhino compas_ghpython
3. Check your Rhino installation
Open Rhino and try to import compas, compas_rhino, compas_ghpython,
and compas_cem with a RhinoPython script.
import compas
import compas_rhino
import compas_ghpython
import compas_cem
And voilá 🥐