🔧 Contributing via Github

Thank you for your interest in contributing to ZToolkit!
Whether you're improving Dynamo nodes, expanding Grasshopper components, fixing bugs, or refining documentation, your contributions help strengthen the tools used across multidisciplinary workflows at Zutari.

This guide explains how to set up your environment, follow the branching strategy, and submit contributions to the repository.

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🚀 Contribution Workflow Overview

Contributions follow a simple branching + pull request workflow:

1. Create a feature/fix branch
2. Develop and test Dynamo or Grasshopper changes
3. Commit using clear commit messages
4. Push your branch to GitHub
5. Open a Pull Request (PR)
6. Team review + merge into dev

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🌿 Branching Strategy

Use:

dev/<first2 letters of name><first2 letters of surname>/<feature-name>

Example (Musa Mthimunye)

dev/mjmt/add-spiral-geometry-node
dev/mjmt/fix-dynamo-deployment
dev/mjmt/gh8-crash-on-load

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🧱 Base Branches

Branch	Purpose
main	Stable releases only (production)
dev	Active development, all PRs merge here
feature branches	Individual units of work, merged into dev

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🛠️ Development Setup

• Visual Studio 2022
• .NET Framework 4.8
• .NET 7 SDK (for GH8)
• Dynamo + Revit installed
• Rhino 7/8 installed

See the Introduction page for full details.

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📌 Making Changes

Dynamo

• Use the correct config (DebugV23, DebugV24, DebugV25)
• Builds auto-deploy to %AppData%\Dynamo\...\packages\ZToolkit

Grasshopper

• Use GH7 or GH8 config
• Build auto-installs into Grasshopper Libraries

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📝 Commit Messages

Good examples:

Added spiral arc conversion node
Improved Grasshopper error reporting
Fixed GH8 reference loading issue

Avoid:

update
fix stuff
changes

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📤 Pull Requests

1. Push your branch
2. Open PR targeting dev
3. Add screenshots if UI/geometry-related
4. Request reviewers
5. Await approval + merge

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❤️ Thank You

Every contribution helps improve ZToolkit for the whole engineering team!