Changes to Tabbed Panels

by John Morse (Last updated:  Wednesday, December 5, 2018)

Overview

Many Rhino controls are contained in tabbed, dockable panels.

You can create tabbed panels in a plug-in using WinForms(Windows), WPF (Windows) or Eto (Windows and Mac).

You can find a sample that demonstrate how to create tabbed panels in the Developer Samples repository on GitHub.

Details

The tabbed panel systems work differently in Rhino 6 than it did in Rhino 5.

Rhino 5 for Windows Behavior

  • The registered panel class must be a public class and contain a default constructor that takes no parameters.
  • A panel instance is created the first time it is referenced by a visible host container and will survive for the length of a Rhino session.
  • When a panel is moved to a different host container, the panels parent is changed to the new host and the same panel instance is used.

Rhino 6 for Windows Behavior (Per-Document Panels)

  • The registered panel class must be a public class and registered as a PanelType.PerDoc panel (the default PanelType).
  • Rhino looks for public constructors in the following order:
    • Constructor taking a RhinoDoc.
    • Constructor taking a uint representing the documents runtime serial number.
    • Constructor with no arguments.
  • A panel instance is created each time a new document is created, if the panel is in a visible host container, and disposed of when the document closes.
  • When a panel is moved to a different host container, the panels parent is changed to the new host and the same panel instance is used.

Rhino 6 for Windows Behavior (System Panels)

  • The registered panel class must be a public class and registered as a PanelType.System panel.
  • Rhino looks for public constructors in the following order:
    • Constructor taking a RhinoDoc.
    • Constructor taking a uint representing the documents runtime serial number.
    • Constructor with no arguments.
  • A panel instance is created the first time it is referenced by a visible host container and will survive for the length of a Rhino session.
  • When a panel is moved to a different host container, the panels parent is changed to the new host and the same panel instance is used.

Rhino 6 for Mac Behavior

Rhino for Mac works the same as Rhino for Windows, with the exception that there will be a panel instance per inspector panel that includes the plug-in panel.

More Information

Rhino 6 includes a IPanel interface which can be implemented to determine when a panel is shown, hidden or closed.

Static events on RhinoDoc should be hooked by your panel class when created and unhooked when disposed of in both Rhino 5 and Rhino 6.