Kangaroo + Galapagos setup question

Hi everyone:

I have been experimenting with Kangaroo lately and am impressed with the potential of this plugin. I am currently exploring various Kangaroo setups to discover particularly useful configurations that will help me shoehorn Kangaroo into other plugins (e.g. Galapagos).

To keep things short, I am designing a simple simulation that drops a particle onto a mesh and counts the time that particle is colliding with that mesh. The goal is to input this number into Galapagos to optimize the position from which the particle is dropped onto the mesh. Admittedly, this is a silly little experiment, but it is helping me understand some of the ins and outs of Kangaroo.

Right now, I have it setup to detect when the simulation ends (i.e. when KE == zero). At this point, the counter should stop counting and report its value to Galapagos. The counter setup works as the simulation runs. However, I am having trouble storing the value because once the simulation is over, the value reverts back to zero. So while it does accurately read the duration, it erases this value before I am able to successfully store it.

Here's a screenshot of the configuration to which I am referring.

I am sure that my setup is far from ideal and somewhat awkward. I welcome any suggestions.

Thank you for reading!

Attachments:

time_on_ice_optimization.gh, 19 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rodrigo Shiordia Lopez on May 20, 2015 at 4:27pm

I don't know about kangaroo 2, but kangaroo 0.99 had a "zombie" mode that could work for you. What this does is that it doesn't need the simulation to be reset. You can set the number of iterations and/or kinetic energy and it works like anormal timer-free grasshopper component.

I think Mr. Piker had an example of this component used with galapagos.

Permalink Reply by William Carroll on May 21, 2015 at 7:23am

Thank you, Rodrigo!

I'll give it a shot and report back. I was always curious what the zombie was used for... exciting! Do you have a link to Daniel's example file you are referring to? I would love to give it a look. I have seen one of his example files linking Kangaroo to Galapagos to optimize a golf shot (it was super cool), but this definition -- if I remember correctly -- used the default physics engine with a frames component attached to the reset. The value of this was set to a number that would allow the simulation to run its course and then report to Galapagos. I have reproduced this in some more recent experiments and have received some interesting results. Thanks again for the response!

William

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