So here it is:

1. Theoretical framework
   This is actually slides for a lecture, so it doesn’t make as much sense as it could if had been designed with being read in mind. That said I think if you use a bit of imagination then it is a pretty useful place to get started.
2. Making a reactive component & Programming a scribble
   These have a long history, he reactive component tutorial was first written sitting in the Qi cafe in Oxford to use with Kathrine Findlay‘s students at Dundee university. Since then it’s been through more than 20 major revisions and I’ve used to teach a huge number of people, so it should have a fair few of the kinks ironed out. However, I haven’t updated it for a while, so there are some changes to the interface, mainly the look of the buttons, and that the ctrl+clicking is no longer needed.
   It is both tutorials in one PDF. There are also videos to go along with both of these: 
   • Reactive component video tutorial.
   • Scribble By Function video tutorial.
3. Fabrication planning tuorial This was written sitting in the Sydney Botanic Gardens with my laptop plugged into a post and then the wire hidden under a bag so that the rangers didn’t see it! It was for Anthony Burke‘s masters of advanced architecture students. It’s quite simple, but just gives a bit more practice with GC, and starts you thinking about making real things.
4. Scripting fundamentals
   This explains a few things about scripting that are not about what to write to make the computer work, but more about how to write code that makes your life easier, formatting, commenting etc.
5. Testing
   This is the modelling equivelent of the scripting fundamentals tutorial, it is essentially theoretical/philosophical, so it leaves you to apply the idea in your own way. It tells you about how to think about your project to avoid getting bitten later.
6. Strategies – These two are about how to make planar quads. They are a bit light, and becasue GCuser is no more, there are no example files. I’ll try to make some one day.
   • strategies series – ensuring planarity with torus patches
   • strategies series – ensuring planarity with sheared cones
7. End
   By this point you know everythign there is to know about GC.
   Whaaaat, not a chance! Keep playing, and go to the forum and post a lot of questions. Rob Woodbury‘s website (and book – Elements of Parametric Design) has a load of great stuff too.

So there you go. There are lots of other tutorials out there, and if you think that one would slide into this sequence well then let me know and I’ll link it in there.

A while ago I put up a photo of the station entrances that I had a play with when I was working at Aedas. This is a picture I came across of one of the Union Square station entrance that I worked on too.

I really should go to Dubai and see what all the fuss is about.

It is all in full swing, but here are some amazing pictures from SG this year!

the picassa albums

I’m sat in Oxford, in my house, Winnie-the-Pooh-ing about and putting things in the dishwasher.

This doesn’t seem like very responsible behaviour for a tutor, especially for one of such an exciting cluster as the “Rapid R&D to Rapid Assembly – snap fit, push on….” group. Surely I should be solving wicked problems and grinding out slick moves to make snap fit shuttering carpentry late into the night.

No. If you don’t have a passport – but you do want to travel – then, in a slightly twisted version the words of the great John Nash, “Fuck you buddy“.

This is a complicated problem, and one that rests on an interface problem. The nice people in the passport office struggle with the fax machine.

I think this is going to take a bit of explaining, “no fax machine got to mess up my passport application” you say, and I’m sure it didn’t. So I’ll start form the beginning. last year, when I lived a happier, but more environmentally profligate, life on the other side of the world, I flew a lot. Being an alien, I carried my passport more or less everywhere I went as this was the only way for me to get onto flights if I was flying with certain airlines. One particularly tired night at Canberra airport I must have dropped the passport as I was sitting in departures. This is a sad thing, that passport was looking pretty exciting, it had visas from all sorts of places in it.

So now I didn’t have a passport, and I needed to get back to the UK to do my best manly duties so I ended up getting a temporary passport from the British consulate in Melbourne. This was enough of a drama to warrant its own story, but I’ll leave that for now.

One thing led to another, and pretty soon my six months of temporary [passport] bliss was over, leaving me with a scruffy, thin notebook. That was OK though as I wasn’t going anywhere. Until I got a last minute draft for SG, and it was all go.

Still all OK though, I got the application in with plenty of time to spare, and I was booked on the high luxury of EasyJet U26025 from Brizzol, so what could go wrong.

well, it turns out that it doesn’t take much to bring the process of the mighty Identity and Passport Service to a grinding halt. To issue a passport, an agent needs to confirm that the passport was indeed issued,not forged, so they confirm that with whoever issued the passport. This seems sensible, they’d jump onto a database and check that the person in question exists, 20 seconds with a barcode scan, and away we go.

Hmm, no, this is done by sending a fax to the issuing agency. I don’t know much about faxes, they’d pretty much had their day before I was old enough to buy fags, (and when I was that age, that age was younger than it is now!). What I do know is that they are unpredictable, and there isn’t much you can do to check if they other end is seeing what you put in, or just a food fight in a coal mine.

So the Austrlian end was sent my paperwork on the 23^rd of February, and when I first called it had been in their hands for about 20 days. The quoted 3 week target for passport turnaround was already starting to crumble.

The problem with time zones is that everyone goes to work at different times, in the case of Australia and the UK, completely different times. this means that there is just one chance to throw a message over the wall. you send your fax, and then you wait…    ..until the next day.

When the next day comes if nothing has happened, then you just do the same thing again.

I’ve spent the last week calling both ends at both ends of the day, hoping that they’d managed to send that fax, but to no avail.

The breakthrough came t 5:30 am today, the fax was found (in the in-tray, filed in the bin, who knows where) and then the rest of the day was battle stations getting the trip organised.

I fly tomorrow afternoon, so fingers crossed that the extra effort of finding the Saturday delivery sticker is worth it.

Rudi Stouffs (check out some of his work here) videoed some of the evening presentations.

There are some great talks in this bunch, Sam Joyce’s is particularly worth a go for a bit of a reflective view on structural engineering!

Mine is a dramatic speed up of the talk I gave at UTS last year. If you are interested, the slides are here.

I parallel-posted this on the GC forum too, so if I’m going to be forced to open IE to post to the GC forum, I thought I’d do a decent job of it.

Below is the GCscript that draws a bell curve. It is almost entirely based on Daniel Shiffman’s processing code on his website at  http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/nature/week-1/

It is driven by a point that controls the standard deviation (?² width of the bell) and the offset from zero (?) .

There are a few other variables, but these just change the size of the curve.

See how you get on with it and if it is at all useful.

the code is after the fold

transaction modelBased 'draw a bell curve'
{
    feature User.Objects.baseCS Bentley.GC.CoordinateSystem
    {
        SymbolSize                = 10;
    }
    feature User.Objects.width Bentley.GC.GraphVariable
    {
        Value                     = 100;
    }
    feature User.Objects.point02 Bentley.GC.Point
    {
        CoordinateSystem          = baseCS;
        XTranslation              =  (51.55);
        YTranslation              =  (-3.22);
        ZTranslation              = 0.0;
    }
    feature User.Objects.point01 Bentley.GC.Point
    {
        Function                  =
    function (CoordinateSystem CS, double varX, double width, double xcoord, double amplification, double widthAmp)
    {
       /* 2010 01 24 Ben Doherty
        * This function draws a bell curve
        * it is based on Daniel Shiffman's processing code
        * http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/nature/week-1/
        * the comments are his*/

        //"e", see http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.e.html for more info
        double e = 2.71828183;
        //a list to store all the "y" values
        double normal = {};
        //default mean of 0
        double m = 0;
        //standard deviation based on varX, driven here by the position of a point
        double sd = (0.5 + varX)/width;        

        //double xcoord = -3;
        //uncomment to start the graph at -3, i.e. centred
        for (int i = 0; i < ToInt(width); ++i)
        {
            //square root of 2 * PI
            double sq2pi = Sqrt(2*PI);
            //-(x - mu)^2
            double xmsq = -1*(xcoord-m)*(xcoord-m);
            //variance (standard deviation squared)
            double sdsq = sd*sd;
            //P(x) function
            normal[i] = (1 / (sd * sq2pi)) * (Pow(e, (xmsq/sdsq)));
           //increment x coordinate
            xcoord += 6 / width;
        }
        //breakpoint;
        Point graphPoints = new Point();
        graphPoints.ByCartesianCoordinates(CS,Series(0,width,1)*widthAmp,normal*amplification,0);
        return graphPoints;
    };
        FunctionArguments         = {baseCS,point02.X,width, point02.Y, 100, 3};
    }
}

Here’s the latest, all in one special version

There are some bits and bobs that need updating (all the icons have changed, thanks guys) but you’ll get the gist of things…

I did a lot of work on the station entrances in GC. They are the little stations that look a bit like insects having sex.

The SmartGeometry Group is now accepting applications for…

Open Platform

A 3-day Workshop at TU Delft University 27th-29th November

This event will complement SmartGeometry’s annual workshop and conference event, bringing many of SmartGeometry’s experienced tutors to guide participants in exploring computational design through a variety of technologies.

Click here to view the Event Poster

The event will run in two parallel streams: one stream will feature training in Generative Components (GC) and Grasshopper, while the second will be a workshop where participants have the opportunity to propose and work on individual design projects using a variety of software platforms. Both streams will offer participants close interaction with tutors from practices and universities known for their accomplishments in computational design and analysis, and complex geometry. Additionally, the stream featuring GC and Grasshopper will feature tutors from the companies behind each platform, Bentley and McNeel. Those working on individual projects will need to be proficient in their chosen platform but can draw on tutor’s skills in various technologies — for instance Processing, C++/OpenGL, RhinoScript — as well as tutors’ expertise in complex problems of geometry, structure, algorithms, and analysis. Participants will be able to change streams as it suits the development of their work.

In the evenings, participants can attend presentations demonstrating the latest projects and research in computational architecture and engineering.

Fees for participation are as follows:

Students/Academics = 75 euros

Professionals = 200 euros

Fees cover training and/or workshop room, and evening presentations.

To register send an email to applications@smartgeometry.org with the following information:

Name

Email Address

Physical Address

Telephone number

Affiliation

Are you a student or professional?

Order of preference between: Grasshopper Training, GenerativeComponents Training, or Open Workshop. If you can/want to only attend one in particular, please list only that option.

The deadline for applications is November 15th.

All applicants will be notified on their acceptance on November 18th and to arrange fee payment.

Questions can be directed to applications@smartgeometry.org

There is the chance to see really interesting talks from the likes of Josh Mason, Judit Kimpian & Jeroen Coenders (spooky J³ thing there) talking about using a model of generic towers to get very quick design space exploration, and a talk from Jim McBride of Makani Power Inc.

You also get the pleasure of seeing me presenting the visualising complexity group, there was some good stuff in there and I fear that my rabbit in the headlights/paralysing hangover stylings weren’t doing them justice.

It’ll be good to see how these projects pan out in the end, if you are one of the people I presented then let me know how it’s going in the comments.

This doesn’t work properly in any browser other than IE (as bentley haven’t noticed that it’s now a minority browser amongst the geeky types that will be watching these videos) so the slides won’t update automatically, might be time to brush the dust off that old IE for a few minutes.