Large Assignment 1: L-System Lace

Due Dates

Assignment : 9am, Thursday February 10
Comments: 9am, Tuesday February 15

Description

The purpose of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to experiment with L-Systems and 2D fabrication technologies. You will use the laser cutter and craft cutter for this assignment.

1. Three L-Systems. Write code that generates three different L-Systems. 1) An abstract fractal. 2) A botanical form. 3) An L-System that is interpreted with shapes other than simple lines. See below for an example. All should be different from the ones we went over in class. You can use the Algorithmic Beauty of Plants book for reference, but your designs should change or expand on designs described in the book. At least one design should include an element of randomness. You will cut out one of these designs and plot one of them. The choice of designs is up to you.




2. A Rogan Brown inspired cut out. Browse the portfolio of Rogan Brown. Use one of his pieces or forms as the basis for a computationally generated cut-out. This design can be generated with L-Systems or any other method you want. Cut out your design using either the laser cutter or craft cutter. You can cut out and assemble multiple pieces for this part of the assignment if you wish.

For plotting either use the etching feature on the laser cutter or a pen attached to the craft cutter.

At least one of your designs should be made in wood and at least one should be made in paper or felt. Be thoughtful about your decisions. Your cut-outs should maintain their shape and not fall apart.

Each design should be no more than 8 inches (20cm) and no less than 4 inches (10cm) in any dimension.

You will need to use Adobe Illustrator to prepare your designs for cutting. See this Illustrator Tutorial for instructions on preparing a design for cutting.

What to Hand In
Create a post on this website that documents the work that you did. Your post should be organized into separate sections for each of the assignment components and should include:

• A description of how you addressed each of the assignment elements. Describe any challenges you experienced. Where relevant, describe why you chose the patterns and parameters you did.

• Images generated by each element of your program, the three L-Systems and the Rogan Brown design. Include multiple images for any components that involve randomness or interesting parameter variation.

• Good photographs of each of your finished cut-outs and plots. See the post on taking good photographs for more information about how to properly document your work.

• Your code. Name your program using the following convention: FirstnameLastnameLA1. (LA1 = Large Assignment 1.) Browse to the folder that contains your processing program and compress this folder to a .zip file. Upload the .zip file to your post. For information about how to upload .zip files, see this page.

• Follow the Code Style Guidelines. Make sure you add a header to your main tab, as described in the guidelines.

Add your post to the “Large Assignment 1 – LSystem Lace” category.

Discussion

Read and comment on the posts of at least three of your classmates.