Attractor Points for a Newbie!

Hi! I am very new to Grasshopper. So...this might be a simple question with a simple answer...

I need to add an attractor point to my Z direction however I can't seem to get the definition correct. I am using one my professor gave us as a general "Closest Point" option. But I can't figure out how to marry it with my definition for my surface. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

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Soft Circle_forum.3dm, 1 MB
GH_Soft Animal_suggested commands_vs3.gh, 46 KB

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Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on June 9, 2016 at 1:57am

Hello and welcome to Grasshopper.

So I think I found your error. You had connected the P (point) output to the z-coordinate. The points dont change though and contain 3 numbers (x,y,z). If you plug it into a z-coordinate it just takes one of those values. For it to be an attractor you usually measure the distance (D output). If you plug that into the z-coordinate it will change when you move the attractor point around.

Also you had the option "only draw preview geometry for selected objects" enabled (one of the icons in the top right of Grasshopper). I wouldn't recommend that. It gets very confusing then. Just hide stuff you dont want to see, which is usually everything except your final output. Just middle-click on selected components and hide them. I added a custom preview at the end, which looks a lot nicer than the usual red jelly that Grasshopper shows by default.

Hope that helps!

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