grasshopper extruding random height

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by peter fotiadis on August 15, 2015 at 4:08am

You should "map" always apples to apples (see flatten) - not to mention internalize your test data (if GH can memorize them, anyway, he he).

Added 2 options for fun (yellow groups)

Attachments:

• capsitemodeling_V1.gh, 16 KB

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 16, 2015 at 4:43am

Hi Wayne,

if you want each shape to have a different random height, you'll need to generate a different random number for each one. It's a bit trickier if all your shapes are distributed in separate lists as your screenshot seems to indicate. I attached two files, one that works on flat data and the other works on shapes that are stored in multiple lists.

Attachments:

• capsitemodeling.gh, 5 KB
• capsitemodeling_2.gh, 6 KB

Permalink Reply by Hairy Curvy on August 17, 2015 at 1:02am

Fantastic!!

now i get what 'lenth list' mean..!

but for the second one I still dont understand what are 'graft' 'flatten' 're..'..these sort of thing, probly because I just started, they seem to be related to the data list

so i'm not sure the reason why you flatten and graft in diff components. I tried to see to diff by randomly did these(like the attached), they look the same Hahaha.

Attachments:

• 1.jpg, 209 KB
• 2.jpg, 187 KB
• 3.jpg, 169 KB

Permalink Reply by peter fotiadis on August 17, 2015 at 1:26am

A List is a collection of things "in order".

A Tree is a collection of Lists "in order" (it's NOT a List of List of ...). The nesting (or depth of "organization", so to speak) is controlled by what is called dimensions.

Graft means get a List and make a Tree (for each item) or get a Tree and make a Tree with a higher dimension (for each item in the Lists). Flatten means get a Tree and do a List (by respecting the "order" of things in the Lists within the Tree). Simplify means do a collection with the minimum dimensions required for maintaining things "in order".

All these mean that if you have N items in some sort of collection (List, Tree) you should provide N corresponding - in a "1:1" way - values (in this case the random height) : if you have 5 things in 3 Lists you should provide 5*3 values blah, blah.

Read more about the ways that GH manages collections of things.

Permalink Reply by Hairy Curvy on August 17, 2015 at 7:01am

Thanks Peter, this helps a lot!!  I kinda get these graft and flatten thing...gotta get familiar with gh logic!

Permalink Reply by peter fotiadis on August 17, 2015 at 8:08am

The above is a List : The only thing that we need to find a given bottle is a conversion about where is bottle N1 (the 0 item in List speech) is and ... then the bottle_ID (the number aka the bottle index, that is): Object bottle = bottles[bottle_ID];

This however is a Tree: Several Lists around ... so we need additional information about where to find a bottle: say the rack number/index (= tree branch) and then the item number/index (= the bottle). This is a tree with one dimension: Object bottle = bottles(rack_ID)[bottle_ID]; Note: if it was, say, a matrix it would require 2 "dimensions" (row/column) in order to locate some bottle.

But what happens if we have several racks in several rooms in several floors in several buildings in several towns and ... finally in several planets?

This is when additional hierarchical "indexing" is required : the dimensions in a tree, that is: Object bottle = bottles (planet_ID, town_ID, building_ID, ... , blah blah)[bottle_ID];

Permalink Reply by Hairy Curvy on August 17, 2015 at 6:21pm

woww, this is really clear and straightforward to me, thanks a lot! it makes much sense now!!  :)))

Permalink Reply by peter fotiadis on August 18, 2015 at 12:05am

BTW: A topic of confusion for a novice is the Indexing (= "numbering") policy: is zero based meaning that the first bottle has index 0, not 1. Same for the first branch or sub-branch or sub-sub-sub-branch.

If in a given rack we have 5 bottles (meaning that bootles.Count = 5, the amount of items that is) ... the following "piece" of code loops though all indices in a List and is valid:

for(int i = 0; i<bottles.Count; i++) { drinkSomeWine(i,bottles,true);}

However the next one is invalid (because indices are from 0 to 4 thus index 5 points to Planet Zorg):

for(int i = 0; i<=bottles.Count; i++) { drinkSomeWine(i,bottles,true);}

If you google, say, "C# List" you'll get a lot of stuff (for coding) since List is one of the "core" ways to keep collections in order. If you replace List with DataTree you'll get nothing since DataTree is the internal GH (by David Rutten) way to manage ... er ... hmm ... these racks of bottles.