GH users to "Give Back"

I love the GH discussion forum for finding answers to in depth questions however, a traditional help document (F1) would be more effective at times, particularly for beginners. I also am well aware that the reason there is not a traditional help document for GH is largely an economic one. Since GH is currently free and continues to change (read: improve) it is difficult to expend the additional energy necessary to generate (and keep current) a help document. I must say I agree with the McNeel decision to put all their available capital energy into advancing the functionality of GH rather than spending it on creating a help system.

However, I have an idea that could benefit GH, its users, as well as its developer, in a major way. Is there a way for the users of GH to "give back" to GH by producing an open source help document. Surely there is some internet tool that would enable the users to easily draft and edit a help document. Something similar to wikipedia with edit-ability. The idea is for each GH user to pick a single component to research; i.e., create examples of, document syntax requirements, explain the components uses, and link to relevant discussion forum articles.

With as many users as there are, it seems like no one would have to do too much. If everyone did just a small portion, the help document would get done. Then over time it could be refined over time by the same community. I am not sure how to organize such an effort. Does anyone have any thoughts about the viability of a community written help document? Has it been done before? Are there any online tools particularly suited to producing a help document format that would facilitate the logistic of a project like this? Does anyone else see a need for a traditional help document?

Stan

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andy Payne on September 19, 2011 at 3:26pm

Hi Luis,

I've attached the current work-in-progress of the third edition of the Grasshopper Primer to give you an idea of where I am right now with the re-write. I actually have quite a bit of more information regarding data trees (in another re-write) that hasn't made it into this version... but as I said... as soon as I make some headway, things begin changing (the nature of the beast) and it's hard to go back and keep revising and re-working everything (this is I think the 4th iteration of this edition). I have all of these files as In Design file (CS5) as well as the source files for the examples included thus far for this version.

When, I wrote the Primer I wanted to use it as a guide just like I do when I teach... so, I don't have a master list of all components inside Grasshopper (with explanations of what each of them do). Instead, I try to break down the concepts. The Primer was setup so that each chapter was roughly associated with a different component palette category (starting with the Interface, Mathematics, Lists, Data Trees, Curves, Surface, Meshes, Scripting, etc.) Those don't necessarily correspond directly to the component tabs, but they're more conceptual frameworks going from easiest to more difficult. Anyway, hopefully this will be useful for someone (and perhaps those who keep saying the old Primer is irrelevant :)

Cheers,

Andy

Attachments:

20110811_Grasshopper_Primer_WIP_lowres.pdf, 4.2 MB

Permalink Reply by Ángel Linares on September 20, 2011 at 3:36am

"Translating" primer into wiki form could be a good first step; You are right saying that the structure of the primer is quite different from wiki, but examples, "theorical" text and other stuff could be linked without problem to the wiki structure (we were talking about that in this thread)

This week I could get some free time to build the wiki tree but could be nice have some rough ideas about it to make it a real community work. Could be usefull share here some "freemind" maps to see what people have in mind? Then conceptual maps could be translate into the wiki. The third step could be create de parallel structure to link all theorical data and exercises from Andy Primer update.

I have been playing a little bit with the wiki page and other point is that translating pages is really easy and fast.

Permalink Reply by Lucas Epp on August 22, 2014 at 5:19pm

Hi Andy,

I know this topic is very old - and help within GH has gotten (a bit) better, but am still wondering if you ever got round to updating your excellent primer any further? I have some new users who are itching to learn the software, and I remember how useful your primer was in the past.

Cheers,

Lucas

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on September 19, 2011 at 3:13pm