22
May
2011
Generative Components tutorials
One of my students asked what order they ought to do the GC tutorials that are on the tutorials page. For some reason I hadn’t actually thought about that – duh!
So here it is:
- 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. - 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 thectrl+clicking is no longer needed.
It is both tutorials in one PDF. There are also videos to go along with both of these: - 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.
- 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. - 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. - 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.
- 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.
12
May
2011
Ecotect tutorial
I made this a really long time ago, and it still isn’t finished, but it woul’d be better for the world if it was out there making people happy (what rot).
I’ve been working on an Ecotect training document for a while, it is still a work in progress, but see what you think so far. Ecotect for site analysis
as it is a work in progress, if you want to put notes on the tutorial and send it back, that’d be very much appreciated!
I snuck it onto the tutorials page a while ago, but I didn’t announce it. If there is enough enthusiasm in the comments I’ll carry on working on it.
20
Mar
2011
ideas speed dating
This is a bit of a UTS architecture classic, I think I first heard about it from Adrian Lahoud and Tarsha Finney a few years ago, and Friday’s class was the first chance I’ve had to really try it out.
The format is simple, split the class in half, and sit the two halves facing each other. Then get them to talk about their ideas for 4 minutes. I had everyone sitting pretty close together – it gets pretty noisy but it seems to pump up the endergy a bit. Once the 4 minutes is up you get one side of the group to rotate. Then start again.
It got good feedback from the class. It's almost too easy, it feels a bit like cheating! Because of the short time and high energy the ideas seem to flow so quickly. There is a bit of a problem with how to rearange the group so that the static ones get to talk to each other too, but I'd imagine that once I get around to reading group theory in the bedroom I'll have a way to fix that.
I had an odd number so I popped the odd one off the end and gave them a 4 minute write up session so that they could capture their ideas.
4
Nov
2009
processing workshop 1
Thanks to everyone who came to todays processing session.
The task I set was to make the dude that Daniel Shiffman draws in his example on the learning processing page stick to the mouse, and scale with the mouse’s position.
Not only that, but to do it in a readable way with minimal use of explicit values so that we can use it to make an object for agent simulations next week.
This isn’t easy, so use a lot of sketches, and diagrms on graph paper to help you. A programmers best tool is their brain, and then second best is a notebook!
My example of one way to do it is after the fold. I don’t expect you to solve this all on your own (but extra brownie points if you do) so go through my code and get a handle on it.
27
Jul
2009
Connecting a slider to a property to in Blend
I felt pretty stupid for a couple of days trying to wire a slider up to a property in Expression Blend. I finally figured it out, so I thought I’d share the love as I didn’t see any tutorials on line.
So you have a new project in blend, it doesn’t much matter if it’s destined for wpf or silverlight, as far as I can tell the procedure is the same.
I’ve used a mega pointless thermometer to illustrate this, hopefully you’ll pick something less crap. (if you do, put a link to it in the comments!) Read the rest of this entry »