Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Some Grasshopper Examples to Experiment with
After marking the first assignments, I noticed some kinds of problems many students were running into, and figured it'd be handy to throw together some working Grasshopper files that you can play around with to help get your heads around how lists and trees work together, as well as generating certain kinds of repetitive geometry. In no particular order, here are the files (put into one .rar file) for you to look at, experiment with, and learn from for your own Grasshopper scripts.
http://www.gamefront.com/files/21608089/examples.rar
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Using the Galapagos Component in Grasshopper
A Brief Description of Galapagos and How to Use It
To recap, Galapagos is a component in Grasshopper that has a unique function and way of using it. It takes a bunch of sliders hooked up to it (which Galapagos refers to as the "Genome"), and changes them by small, gradual amounts, all the while checking a number (produced by what I'll explain later as the "Fitness function") and trying to make that number bigger or smaller over time, depending on the settings you choose.
To make the Galapagos component work, you hook its "Genome" parameter up to any number of sliders (click and drag from "Genome" to the slider; OR select a bunch of sliders, right click on "Genome", and click "Selected Sliders"), and then hook its "Fitness" parameter up to a number that is produced by your Grasshopper script (click and drag from "Fitness" to the output number parameter).
To let Galapagos do its thing, you doubleclick the Galapagos component and a window pops up with three tabs. Most times, you can just leave the first tab as it is. For the short 'n' simple explanation, to run Galapagos, click on the "Solvers" tab and click "Start Solver".
To get a little more advanced, you can change the kind of solver used by clicking one of the two buttons to the left of the "Start Solver" button - "Evolutionary Solver" (default, left) and "Simulated Annealing Solver" (right). The difference between these two options is simply the process Galapagos follows to try and maximise / minimise the Fitness number.
Handy Links Explaining How the Evolutionary Solver Works
These links are the same as the ones that show up under the "Options" tab when you doubleclick Galapagos. The reason I've got them here is because they're essential towards understanding how to use Galapagos. If you don't read these, you're putting yourself at a huge disadvantage.
Evolutionary Principles applied to Problem Solving
Fitness Functions
Selection
Coupling
Coalescence
Mutations
Define "Fitness"...
Fitness Pressure
On Getting Lucky in Higher Dimensions
Lastly, I'm working on getting some simple video tutorials together explaining how to use the Galapagos component. You can expect to see them posted here some time over the next week, depending when I get time to create them.
To recap, Galapagos is a component in Grasshopper that has a unique function and way of using it. It takes a bunch of sliders hooked up to it (which Galapagos refers to as the "Genome"), and changes them by small, gradual amounts, all the while checking a number (produced by what I'll explain later as the "Fitness function") and trying to make that number bigger or smaller over time, depending on the settings you choose.
To make the Galapagos component work, you hook its "Genome" parameter up to any number of sliders (click and drag from "Genome" to the slider; OR select a bunch of sliders, right click on "Genome", and click "Selected Sliders"), and then hook its "Fitness" parameter up to a number that is produced by your Grasshopper script (click and drag from "Fitness" to the output number parameter).
To let Galapagos do its thing, you doubleclick the Galapagos component and a window pops up with three tabs. Most times, you can just leave the first tab as it is. For the short 'n' simple explanation, to run Galapagos, click on the "Solvers" tab and click "Start Solver".
To get a little more advanced, you can change the kind of solver used by clicking one of the two buttons to the left of the "Start Solver" button - "Evolutionary Solver" (default, left) and "Simulated Annealing Solver" (right). The difference between these two options is simply the process Galapagos follows to try and maximise / minimise the Fitness number.
Handy Links Explaining How the Evolutionary Solver Works
These links are the same as the ones that show up under the "Options" tab when you doubleclick Galapagos. The reason I've got them here is because they're essential towards understanding how to use Galapagos. If you don't read these, you're putting yourself at a huge disadvantage.
Evolutionary Principles applied to Problem Solving
Fitness Functions
Selection
Coupling
Coalescence
Mutations
Define "Fitness"...
Fitness Pressure
On Getting Lucky in Higher Dimensions
Lastly, I'm working on getting some simple video tutorials together explaining how to use the Galapagos component. You can expect to see them posted here some time over the next week, depending when I get time to create them.
Galapagos Video Jeremy Showed in Class
Project Teaser from Nate Holland on Vimeo.
Video description on Vimeo:
This animation condenses my architectural thesis project from an entire year of research and design into four short minutes.
Video and project by Nate Holland.
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