Calling Compute with JavaScript

by Scott Davidson (Last updated:  Thursday, November 12, 2020)

By the end of this guide, you should have all the tools installed necessary for using the Rhino Compute through JavaScript.

The libraries will run on on all major browsers as well as node.js.

Setting up a Compute Project using JavaScript

There are a few client side tools which need to be referenced that are essential to communicate with the Compute server. These include:

  • rhino3dm.js - Is part of the Rhino3dm project. It is a Javascript wrapper and web assembly (WASM) for openNURBS which contains the functions to read and write Rhino Geometry Objects.

  • compute-rhino3d.js - This is a work in progress package which is meant to add classes available in RhinoCommon, but not available through rhino3dm.js. Compute-rhino3d makes calls into the McNeel Cloud Compute server for these functions. It handles all the transaction authorizations and JSON data conversion.

In a browser based application index.html would look like this:

<html>
  <head>
  <!-- stuff -->
  </head>
  <body>
      <!-- Import maps polyfill -->
      <!-- Remove this when import maps will be widely supported -->
      <script async src="https://unpkg.com/es-module-shims@1.10.0/dist/es-module-shims.js"></script>

      <script type="importmap">
          {
              "imports": {
                  "rhino3dm":"https://unpkg.com/rhino3dm@8.4.0/rhino3dm.module.min.js",
                  "rhinocompute": "https://www.unpkg.com/compute-rhino3d@0.13.0-beta/compute.rhino3d.module.js"
              }
          }
      </script>

      <script type="module" src="./script.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

In the script.js, import the libraries:

// Import libraries

import rhino3dm from 'rhino3dm'
import { RhinoCompute } from 'rhinocompute'

// Load rhino3dm
const rhino = await rhino3dm()
console.log('Loaded rhino3dm.')

// Your code ...

For a node.js application, first install the libraries with npm:

npm i rhino3dm compute-rhino3d

Then reference them in your script:

// Import libraries

import rhino3dm from 'rhino3dm'
import RhinoCompute from 'compute-rhino3d'

// Load rhino3dm
const rhino = await rhino3dm()
console.log('Loaded rhino3dm.')

The first use of Compute

Examples of using JavaScript to access compute can be found in the Javascript Sample repo

Next Steps

Congratulations! You have the tools to use Rhino Compute server. Now what?

  1. To see the transactional nature of Compute, read through compute.rhino3d.js
  2. See a list of the 2400+ API calls available for compute.rhino3d.com.
  3. Download the Compute Samples repo from GitHub.
  4. The libraries are still very new and changing rapidly. Give them a try or get involved. Ask any questions or share what you are working on the Compute Discussion Forum