Tutorial

The main purpose of compas_notebook is to visualise COMPAS objects in a Jupyter notebook.

Basic Usage

Visualization is handled by creating a viewer inside a Jupyter notebook and adding objects to its scene. The scene is an instance of compas.scene.Scene that is preconfigured for context="Notebook", and works the same way as any other COMPAS scene.

Note

For more information on visualisation with scenes, see …

import compas
from compas.datastructures import Mesh
from compas_notebook.viewer import Viewer

mesh = Mesh.from_obj(compas.get('tubemesh.obj'))

viewer = Viewer()
viewer.scene.add(mesh)
viewer.show()

Object Colors

To change the color of an object, specify the color when adding the object to the scene. You can use a COMPAS color object, or any of the following color specifications: hex, rgb1, rgb255.

viewer.scene.add(mesh, color=Color.red())
viewer.scene.add(mesh, color='#ff0000')
viewer.scene.add(mesh, color=(1.0, 0.0, 0.0))
viewer.scene.add(mesh, color=(255, 0, 0))

Configuration

The viewer can be configured to have a certain size and to have a specific background colour.

viewer = Viewer(width=600, height=400, background='#eeeeee')

The grid can be turned on or off.

viewer = Viewer(show_grid=False)

Viewports

The viewer supports two viewports: “top” and “perspective”. The default is “perspective”. Currently, you can only set the viewport when creating the viewer. It cannot be changed afterwards.

viewer = Viewer(viewport='top')

Note that in the top viewport, rotation controls are disabled.

Scene Export

Because the scene is an instance of compas.scene.Scene, it can be exported to JSON. This can be done manually or using the save button in the viewer.

The scene can be exported by itself

viewer.scene.to_json("scene.json")
compas.json_dump(viewer.scene, "scene.json")

or as part of a larger session object.

compas.json_dump({"scene": viewer.scene, "...": "..."}, "session.json")

An exported scene can be loaded into a diferent notebook or visualised in a different visualisation context such as Rhino or Blender.

# different notebook

import compas
from compas_notebook.viewer import Viewer

scene = compas.json_load("scene.json")
viewer = Viewer(scene=scene)
viewer.show()

# Rhino

import compas

scene = compas.json_load("scene.json")
scene.draw()