External modules in CwAPI3D Python

EmiShiraishi commented 3 years ago

Hello! Thanks a lot for producing the awesome API !! I have one question if it is possible to use "external modules" in CwAPI3D Python. (etc rhino3dm, pandas..) When I launched the Python console directly, it was working. However when I launched the Python console through Cadwork 3d, it was not working, and I got an error "ERROR: No module named ''--file name--", even though the external modules are in the same folder. .... I am really happy if I could get the tip to solve this problem! Thanks

question

EmiShiraishi commented 3 years ago

Hello again I could solve this problem by myself..! It has worked when I inserted the modules under the folder below.

'C:\Program Files\cadwork.dir\EXE_27\PCLIB.x64\python38' (sys.path)

I am looking forward to expanding the possibility of cadwork by using the API! Thanks a lot for your contribution again!

fbpyr commented 3 years ago

Hi @EmiShiraishi FYI: While your solution works, there is another alternative: If you have a separate directory or virtualenv with your additional python packages, you can add that path in sys.path as shown here: https://gist.github.com/fbpyr/ad9dd650212ca60b7d00d283755ee58a 🙂 This comes with the following advantages:

cadwork python Lib is kept as shipped by cadwork
one does not need privileges to add packages into Program Files
for debugging the additional packages or their interactions, they can easily be "switched off"

ivan-modelical commented 3 years ago

HI @fbpyr,

After appending libraries to sys and having them available for import, cadwork crashes after the first run if pandas is used.

With other libraries, like ifcopenshell, it seems to work fine. Have you had any similar experience with pandas and cadwork at all?

fbpyr commented 3 years ago

Hi @ivan-modelical which cadwork version do you use? I had the run-only-once-then-crash problem you are describing a lot on cadwork 27, but after switching to cadwork 28 I could switch between running the addin and main cadwork application, as long as I terminate my pt_python session via sys.exit() , which is clearly more enjoyable than the run-once version. 🙂

I can however reproduce your scenario with pandas or numpy only being importable once in a cadwork session. Maybe they (or just numpy since pandas depends on numpy) are doing something special in C* ? Would be interesting to know the root cause.

ifcopenshell, psutil and many other libs import fine multiple times though, even though they use C under the hood.

ivan-modelical commented 3 years ago

Hi @fbpyr , using v28 Build 238

It only happens with pandas, as you say. I'm using it inside a script called from the API menu bar in the UI, not from the console, and it crashed after first run always.

ivan-modelical commented 3 years ago

Hi all, a quick update for anyone interested

xlsxwriter library seems to work and not crash cadwork v28 for writing to excel.

Pandas and OpenPyxl both crash v28 after first run.

cwapi3d / PythonConsole

External modules in CwAPI3D Python #4