Sphere
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Consider the sphere. How are spheres made in nature? There are several ways. The sphere we live on was formed by gravity pulling masses together into a ball. Rocks smooth […]
Ripples
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. When you drop a rock in a lake, a ripple emanates from the point where the rock breaks the water’s surface. That ripple is up there on the list of […]
Terrain
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Let’s riff off the grid you just generated. Instead of keeping the grid flat, with all the z-coordinates at 0, you will randomize them. When the surface is rotated toward […]
Fabrication Summer Camp: Day 3
Welcome to the third day of our summer camp! All the shapes we’ve made up till now been solid objects. But some objects have holes, like buttons, donuts, and things with eyes and mouths. Additionally, our only means of adding curved edges has been to superimpose circles onto other objects. This superimposing is not a […]
Cylinder
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. You are on a roll. Literally. Your next shape is a cylinder, and the word cylinder comes from the Greek noun kulindros, which means roller. A cylinder is a bit […]
Cone
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. You are on your way to becoming a sculptor of bits. The next stage of your journey is to forge a cone. At one end of a cone is a […]
Dots
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Soon our shapes will become more complex. There will be many vertices and many triangles. You will find it helpful to visualize the vertices on their own before thinking about […]
Grid
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Earlier we modeled a square using just two triangles. Now we model a rectangle using a dense grid of triangles. A dense grid does not offer many advantages over a […]
Fabrication Summer Camp: Day 2
Welcome to the second day of our summer camp! Today we will explore two big ideas: loops and turtle geometry. Like yesterday, we will be drawing, coding, and making. Caterpillar Code is like a caterpillar. It is on its way to being something beautiful that will bring people delight. But it’s trapped in a body […]
Wrapped Addition
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. What time will it be 5 hours from now? What day is 10 days from now? As you work out the answers to these questions, you may find yourself incrementing […]