Scripting and Computational Geometry

Scripting and Computational Geometry
Compiled by Stylianos Dritsas in Spring of 2003, reedited Summer 2004 Copyright (C) 2003-2004 Stylianos Dritsas. All rights reserved.

Introduction
In this document I collected some basic information about scripting, hoping that to help some people interested in finding an easy way to access computation for design purposes. The thing is that I cannot explain everything because either it will take too long (and it would be painful for both of us) but also because there are many things that I am not aware of. Anyway this paper runs fast and in breadth (rather than depth), it covers pretty much most of the commonalities (yet banalities) of coding, so after this maybe you will be a better coder (I cannot promise for anything else; it's up to you though). I will use the Rhino as a CAD platform because it contains all essential back end/front end of computational geometry and also it is an easy and relatively open environment for experimentation. Rhino uses vbscript as an embedded scripting language. Even though vbscript is not one of the most powerful computer languages, it has wide range of applicability, it is fairly easy to learn and pretty flexible. Anyway, once you know one language it is easier to jump into any other.

Structure
It turns out that most of the computer languages are founded in only four basic conceptual components. Even though the syntax changes from one language to the other, these concepts remain the same. So, once you learn one language adequately, it will be easier to access any other. 1. 2. 3. 4. Data definition and manipulation (describe information) Conditional execution (control the flow of a program) Iterative execution (compress processing by repetition) Modularize (organize code for reuse)

Information - Data Types - Variables
Information in computers is always based on numeric quantities. The fact that we can type text, draw images or model three dimensional objects is possible once we have...