The Grid Terminal System

The Grid Terminal System is where you will be able to access your ship's devices. It provides access to all blocks on the same grid the programmable block is on, as well as any grids connected via rotors, pistons or connectors (not landing gears) - as long as the blocks have the same ownership as the running programmable block.

You access it via the property GridTerminalSystem, which belongs to the script's base class, MyGridProgram. This means that it will be available to all methods and properties in your script - but it is not directly available in any subclasses. More on this later.

The easiest way to see what the Grid Terminal System has to offer, is to create your script project in Visual Studio. Find your Main method

public void Main() 
{
    // Start typing in here
}

and where the comment indicates above, start typing Grid (mind the casing). Visual Studio will respond by showing you this:

This is called "intellisense". It shows you what is available to you at the current location. In this case, it is showing you GridTerminalSystem, which is the property we want. Press tab or enter and the IDE will fill in the rest for you.

Now continue by adding a . at the end. This is what is important. Now it should show you this:

These are the methods available to you in the grid terminal system. All of them are ways to retrieve blocks from your grids in various ways.

• GetBlocks Gets all the available blocks the Grid Terminal System has access to. Requires a target list of the base IMyTerminalBlock type.

  // Create a list containing _all_ blocks in the system
  List<IMyTerminalBlock> blocks = new List<IMyTerminalBlock>();
  GridTerminalSystem.GetBlocks(blocks);

• GetBlocksOfType Allows you to retrieve a list of blocks of a specific type, optionally filtered by a given collect predicate.

  // Create a list containing all interior lights in the system
  List<IMyInteriorLight> lights = new List<IMyInteriorLight>();
  GridTerminalSystem.GetBlocksOfType(lights);

  // Create a list containing all interior lights in the system, but store them
  // in a generic list containing blocks of the IMyTerminalBlock type
  List<IMyTerminalBlock> lights = new List<IMyTerminalBlock>();
  GridTerminalSystem.GetBlocksOfType<IMyInteriorLight>(lights);

  // Create a list containing all interior lights that are currently on
  List<IMyInteriorLight> lights = new List<IMyInteriorLight>();
  GridTerminalSystem.GetBlocksOfType(lights, light => light.Enabled);

• SearchBlocksOfName Searches through all the blocks, returning those whose name contains the entered name. Meaning, a block named "Mynoch" would be returned if you search for "no". Also provides the ability to use a collect predicate, just like GetBlocksOfType. Unfortunately, this method can only accept a target list of the base IMyTerminalBlock type.

  // Returns all lights in the system whose name contains the text "no"
  List<IMyTerminalBlock> lights = new List<IMyTerminalBlock>();
  GridTerminalSystem.SearchBlocksOfName("no", lights, light => light is IMyInteriorLight);

• GetBlockWithName Allows you to retrieve a single block having a specific name. Note that the name must be exact, case sensitive and including any spacing.

  // Find a block of a specific name, then check if it's a timer block. If it is, store it in the
  // timer variable, otherwise store null there.
  IMyTimerBlock timer = GridTerminalSystem.GetBlockWithName("Timer Block") as IMyTimerBlock;

• GetBlockWithId Allows you to retrieve a block by its EntityId. This is an unique id given to a block by the game, and will remain the same even if you rename the block.

• GetBlockGroups Fetches a list of block groups, optionally filtered by a given collect predicate.

  // Create a list which contains all the block groups in the system
  List<IMyBlockGroup> groups = new List<IMyBlockGroup>();
  GridTerminalSystem.GetBlockGroups(groups);

  // Create a list which contains all the block groups whose name contains the text "no"
  List<IMyBlockGroup> groups = new List<IMyBlockGroup>();
  GridTerminalSystem.GetBlockGroups(groups, group => group.Name.Contains("no"));

• GetBlockGroupWithName Returns a block group by its name. Note that the name must be exact, case sensitive and including any spacing.

  // Retrieve the block group named "Interesting Blocks"
  IMyBlockGroup group;
  group = GridTerminalSystem.GetBlockGroupWithName("Interesting Blocks");