Installation

You need three things: Python, OpenRocket, and orhelper.

1. Python

orhelper needs Python 3.9 or newer.

2. OpenRocket

Install OpenRocket (version 22.02 or newer) from openrocket.info/downloads. orhelper runs OpenRocket's own code, so it needs the program, not only your .ork files.

The OpenRocket installers include the Java runtime that orhelper uses. If you use a bare OpenRocket .jar file instead, you need a Java runtime yourself: Java 17 for OpenRocket 23.09 and newer; 22.02 also runs on Java 11.

orhelper looks for OpenRocket in the default location of your system:

System	Default location
macOS	/Applications/OpenRocket.app
Linux	~/OpenRocket
Windows	%PROGRAMFILES%\OpenRocket

If yours is somewhere else, tell orhelper where it is:

orhelper.OpenRocketInstance(jar="/path/to/OpenRocket.jar")        # a jar file
orhelper.OpenRocketInstance(orhome="/path/to/OpenRocket")         # an installation folder

See Errors, logging and JVM options for the full list of options.

3. orhelper

pip install orhelper

Some of the examples also need plotting and optimisation libraries, which are optional:

pip install "orhelper[examples]"    # matplotlib and scipy
pip install "orhelper[pandas]"      # pandas, if you want DataFrames

Check that it works

Save this as check.py and run it:

import orhelper

with orhelper.OpenRocketInstance(log_level="ERROR") as instance:
    print("OpenRocket started")

If it prints OpenRocket started, you're ready for the quickstart. If it complains that it cannot find OpenRocket or Java, see Troubleshooting.