MAT 238 Week 1

I was following this tutorial because I googled "organic grasshopper tutorial". I figured because it showed the entire process of building the Grasshopper system I'd be fine despite it being too advanced for me to understand. That turned out to mostly be true.

I was basically mystified after the first few steps once the tutorial started using trees. Even though seeing the structure in a panel makes it seem straightforward, I didn't understand how they were being handled between nodes and which branches were being used. Because I had the preview on for the circles, I thought mine wasn't working the entire time because the tutorial didn't have that problem. I also had trouble during an entwine step where the tutorial was able to combine the OnMesh, Length(Line), Angle, and Collider into the second input, whereas my Grasshopper forced me to create new inputs for each one. The Collider was also a lot more sensitive in mine and some points would be launched out of the boundary I set. I had to turn the Strength parameter much lower than the tutorial. You can see what it was meant to look like in the picture where the outlines are grey and not red.

When I did end up exporting it correctly to Illustrator, I realized it wasn't as borked as I thought. I would have added more circles had I known. The benefit of the three warped circles was that the laser cutting took three minutes, and there was no cleanup.

Upon reflection, I would have picked a more basic tutorial so I could have had a more concrete understanding of Grasshopper, even at the cost of something less cool looking.