teaching strategy

Hi,

this discussion area is quite empty so I would like to start with a basic discussion.

I usually offer a GH course for just one term. It consists of 4-5 teaching units to explain the basics of Rhino and GH (each unit app. 1,5h). After that I offer coaching units for the students and their projects.

The course is for beginners who have rudimental knowledge of 3d modelling software.

In my opinion it is very hard to start with GH when you don´t know the basics about polygons, vectors, curves and surfaces.

So I always start with a short explanation of Rhino, its basic tools and an extensive description of all kind of geometries.

Later this helps to understand the connections between the nodes in GH and their geometrical dependency.

After that I try to show the main difference between the usual modelling concepts and the generative modelling with GH.

This experience is necessary for deciding the best way to model future projects.

Next is the most difficult part because it is the main difference between an usual CAD-software and GH.

The data tree

Of course there is other software which has some kind of data tree, but in most cases it is not editable.

This feature is the most exciting in GH. It is hard to explain, but when you get the point it is the most powerfull tool you can get.

I am excited to read how you arrange your courses.

Thomas

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 2, 2012 at 3:24pm

I concur that you should teach about vectors, points, planes, curves etc. first. But you could start with Grasshopper and just stick to numbers for a while. It would probably be incredibly boring, but at least you can explain components and wires while sticking to things people know (A² + B³) = x

I would probably never do this myself though as it's far more fun to work with geometry right away.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Diego Xavier on October 2, 2012 at 7:38pm

I agree, I find it easy for me to learn while practicing with the actual thing and learning its concepts from the pratice. Explain it by doing it, instead of talking about it. Modelab recently showed a perfect example of it on its last free webinar on Grasshopper for beginners. It's worth a look on their work.

Permalink Reply by Sander Mulders on October 3, 2012 at 2:39am

An other approach might be to use the modular setup of Grasshopper to explain how points, curves and surfaces are related. I teach a course in basic parametric design for 2nd year bachelor students who have only prior experience with Autodesk Revit. In my experience explaining geometry in this way works more natural compared to doing a rhino modelling course first. Using various tutorials we show the students various ways to create geometry.

Polygons (meshes) we try to skip for as long as possible since for most basic understanding it is not necessary.

Permalink Reply by Thomas J. Mrokon on October 4, 2012 at 12:37am

Thanks for the feedback. I will take a look at that webinar and next time I will start directly with GH. Maybe it is better to mix the three components rhino, geometry and GH and not teach them linear. A practical example in GH is a better way to explain vectors than making mathematics.

Permalink Reply by Marios Tsiliakos on October 4, 2012 at 8:39am

In my case, I don't even ask for rhino modelling efficiency as a prerequisite for learning GH. Just a fluent knowledge of any CAD package is enough. The necessity of rhino input is dealt during the classes as a complimentary piece of information.

I believe that the "under the hood" structure of rhino geometry is better or in my case( two birds with one stone) explained within the GH "exploded" logic and narrowing down to the level of simple points and values. I haven't got any difficulty in teaching GH this way until today. Of course my students can't claim that the are fluent rhino users, but I believe that with individual practice they can reach a decent level. I find rhino to be a really user friendly and easy to learn software.

On the other hand I also find numbers to be quite useful in the first steps, since most people are familiar with mathematics while the programming and associative logic is not that clear(even though its purely logic). This way I attempt to combine simple mathematics (always with some kind of visual output) and then proceed to the core of the associative and hierarchical structured GH definitions.

This way any student feels confident that he has a general control over the UI and that he can actually create stuff from just numbers, thus proceed to advanced data manipulation.

Best,

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