Call for Galapagos submissions

Dear users,

in a couple of weeks I'm giving a lecture at the AAG10 conference and I'll be talking about Galapagos. Instead of a set of hypothetical scenarios I'd much prefer to show actual cases where Galapagos is used to solve a problem.

Of course I realise that in the current state Galapagos leaves much to be desired. Wishes have been pouring in since it was first included and I have every intention of working on these in the upcoming week(s). So if you run into problems trying to apply Galapagos please post them in this thread and I'll see about getting it fixed/added.

I talk about some of the behind-the-scenes algorithms that drive Galapagos in this post. It might be a good starting point if you want to learn a bit more about the details.

Goodwill,

David

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jacek Jaskólski on September 12, 2010 at 10:00am

Here's one of my test drives - Galapagos tries to find a simplified "medial curve" between two given curves: (the gray underlay is just the voronoi method used for comparison)

While it's not very efficient and not at all useful, what I think you might find interesting is the "bonus for high fitness" concept, which highly improves the speed of the solution:
By applying a power/exponential function to the fitness parameter you make Galapagos favour "the best of the fittest".

Attachments:

test_15_medial curve.ghx, 407 KB

Permalink Reply by Fred Becquelin on September 13, 2010 at 4:06am

Hi there,
David thanks for your briliant software! If you're intrested (and if I can find the time) I could try to fix my little Hull Tuner that moves control points and waterplane to fit a bunch of target values (Imersed vol, prismaic coef, position of main area section...), minimize wet srf and maximize stability.
It's very very slow and I have to change the way and order points are moved to get better results, so there's some work to do. What's your deadline?
About ftness, it's always difficult to find the right rating formula, so that one factor won't "over rule" another. Or does... From my experience I'm not sure the power exponential really boosts the thing, although it's more satisfying to watch high fitness variations rather than small digits changes far to the right.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on September 13, 2010 at 6:34am

If you have the time I'd love to see it. My deadline would friday I suppose. I'm hoping to release an improved Galapagos today or tomorrow, though it's mostly improved UI, not so much improved performance.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Fred Becquelin on September 13, 2010 at 5:15pm

Rhaa! 1AM !! See what you're doing to me?! I'm going to bed, we'll see in the morning if it was worth it ...

Attachments:

Hull Tuner.JPG, 191 KB

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on September 13, 2010 at 5:33pm

Looks exciting. Good night :)

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Fred Becquelin on November 18, 2010 at 3:33am

Hi Dave and everyone!

Sorry I couldn't finish my hull tuner def, I've been changing jobs and cities twice since my last post...

But now, thanks to you, I'm back to Paris where I have an oportunity to work with Wilmotte on the Nice Eco Stadium. Hopefully they'll be hooked to grasshopper and galapagos for the next decade. Praise you!

This is a part of the quick demo I made. It's not very elaborate but it did the job (they called me back the next day!)
Cheers, keep it up and thanks again!

Fred

Attachments:

Courbes stade.3dm, 27 KB
solar 2.ghx, 402 KB

Permalink Reply by Kris Hammerberg on November 24, 2010 at 12:38am

"Hopefully they'll be hooked to grasshopper and galapagos for the next decade."

How did you manage this?! I wouldn't mind that at all. I actually feel like a sentient life-form when I use grasshopper/galapagos versus AutoCAD drudgery.

EDIT: just checked out the def. This blows my mind. I love it.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on November 24, 2010 at 12:14pm

Awesome!

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Seattle, WA

Permalink Reply by Claudio on September 13, 2010 at 5:40pm

Hi there,

Yeap I'm all lost again. Since yesterday I've been playing with Galapagos, without any success of understanding it (manipulating geometry)...I've tried some examples out there, It looks promising...I guess I need more time and literature as well Any instructions on the way David?

thank you

cheers

Permalink Reply by adele scampoli on November 24, 2010 at 2:31am

literature:good word...which one?
thanks a lot!!!!

Permalink Reply by Jacek Jaskólski on September 15, 2010 at 2:23pm

Again, just a small contribution, but maybe someone will find this interesting:

Galapagos is used to find a path from A to B on "topography" (sloped surface).
There are two fitness criteria: the average slope and the length of the path. You can decide which is more important by applying different power functions to each of them: