Plugin Discovery

Designer supports two main methods of plugin discovery: local plugins found in project folders and remote plugins discovered through the network.

Local Plugins

Local plugins are discovered in two locations:

1. Project Plugins Folder: Plugins found in the Plugins folder within the current project folder
2. Common Plugins Folder: Plugins found in the common plugins directory, which is shared across all projects

Designer will automatically load plugins from both locations, with project-specific plugins taking precedence over common plugins if there are naming conflicts.

Local plugins can be configured using a d3plugin.json file in the plugin’s root directory. For detailed information about local plugin configuration, see the Plugin Metadata page.

Remote Plugins

Remote plugins are discovered using DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD). This allows plugins to be hosted on network devices and automatically discovered by Designer.

DNS-SD Configuration

Remote plugins must be registered with the following service name format:

<instance>._d3plugin._tcp.<domain>

Where:

• instance is the name of the service
• domain is usually local for local network discovery

Disguise plugins are distinguished from other services based on the service type of the SRV record: _d3plugin._tcp

Python Plugin Library

For Python-based remote plugins, the Python plugin library provides a convenient way to implement plugin functionality and handle DNS-SD registration. The library includes:

• Automatic DNS-SD service registration
• Built-in support for reading d3plugin.json configuration.
• Helper functions for common plugin operations.

For detailed information about remote plugin configuration and metadata requirements, see the Plugin Metadata page.