Console and variables¶

The bottom row of the window shows the kernel twice: as a transcript you can type at, and as a table you can open.

The console¶

The Console tab is a jupyter console attached to the same kernel Run Cell sends to. Keystrokes go to a pty and its output is written back verbatim, so it is IPython: line editing, history search, tab completion, ? and ??, and the magics.

Run a cell with Shift-Enter, then ask the console about what it left behind:

In [1]: part.volume
Out[1]: 1256.6370614359173

Ten thousand lines of scrollback are kept. Right-clicking offers copy and paste; on macOS Cmd-C / Cmd-V work through the application menu.

About has a Kernel connection section with this instance's Jupyter connection file and the command that uses it:

jupyter-console --existing "<the path About shows>"

Keep the quotes: the path contains a space on macOS and Windows. Install jupyter-console outside Studio; the environment here is managed by Settings.

The variable explorer¶

The pane beside the console lists what is in the namespace: name, type and a short repr, with a length in brackets for anything sized and build123d's label where an object has one. Drag the boundaries between the columns to re-proportion them; the widths are remembered.

The rows are refreshed whenever the kernel goes idle — after a run, after a line in the console. The listing reads only what is already there and computes no geometry.

Expanding a row asks for its contents at that moment, as deep as the data goes: rows inside rows are addressed by position, so an assembly unrolls by its children. Long collections are paged.

Filter and sort. The box above the table filters the rows: type part of a name — or of a build123d label — and only matching variables stay, through every refresh, until Escape clears it. Clicking Name or Type in the header sorts by that column; a second click reverses it, a third returns to the order the names were defined in.

Selection. A click on a row selects it; the chevron opens it. Cmd-click (Ctrl-click on Windows and Linux) adds a row to the selection, Shift-click extends it. Right-clicking offers Show and Copy for everything selected: Show runs show(a, b, c, names=["a", "b", "c"]) on the kernel — the variable names become the names in the viewer's tree — with the line appearing in the console; Copy puts the names on the clipboard as a, b, c. Rows below a variable are addressed by position and have no name, so they cannot be selected. _imported, the result of Show on a CAD file in the tree, is a plain variable like any other.

What a click computes¶

Expanding a build123d shape adds its face, edge and vertex counts. Anything one-dimensional — an Edge, a Wire, a Line, a Spline — adds its start and end point (line @ 0 and line @ 1 in a script). An edge or a face adds its geometry: line, circle, bspline, plane, cylinder, sphere. The small geometry types open to their values: a BoundBox to min, max, size, center and diagonal; a Vertex or Vector to its coordinates; a Location — and so Pos and Rot — to position and orientation; an Axis to position and direction; a Plane to its origin and three directions. Each of these is a plain read, under a millisecond whatever the size of the object.

Volume, area and the bounding box of a shape are not computed. On a suspension assembly, each expansion would cost:

Ask for those in the console:

In [2]: rc.volume

The viewer shows the extent bounding_box() would report, and show() prints it.

Which world the pane describes¶

The active tab decides:

Nothing switches back on its own: after a run or a session ends, the output stays on screen.