The software formerly known as Explicit History

For designers who are exploring new shapes using generative algorithms, Grasshopper™ is a graphical algorithm editor tightly integrated with Rhino’s 3-D modeling tools. Unlike RhinoScript, Grasshopper requires no knowledge of programming or scripting, but still allows designers to build form generators from the simple to the awe-inspiring.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Data Indexing Tutorial 2

How the Cycle option behaves during index access

Download the definition file (made with version 0.2.0012) .

When accessing individual items in a list, one has to use an index value. The first item in any list if always stored at location zero, the second item at location 1 and so on and so forth. Typically, if you start to access a list at index -5, an error wil occur since no such location exists. However, some components that deal with indices have a Cycle option that remaps any index values onto the valid domain.

This example shows how Cycle on/off behave differently.

2 comments:

Adrien said...

hi bob,
I was looking into these tutorials to try to make spiraling curve down a surface. In order to do so I had to do a lot of manual organization of point data which ruins the ability to change the number of points and have the spiral update.

I'd really appreciate any help you or a forward might provide on this problem, can I send my definition file along somewhere?

thanks

Adroit said...

The tag component under expression has "L+unity," which adds 1 to the y value within the list. This makes the text appear above the point. My question is, what is unity? What are other variables that you could plug in under expression? What would you do if you wanted to have the text below the point? (without adding additional components)