KALEIDOSCOPE DRAWING SOFTWARE DOWNLOAD

Whenever a turtle is hatched by one of the 'arm' turtles, it proceeds to draw a circle.

How much randomness can you add and still maintain some kind of overall structure? EXTENDING THE MODEL Instead of each turtle moving or turning a given amount, what about having it move a small random amount (as in the changes to curr-color-sep from COLOR-SHIFT). Increase the size of the circles drawn by each of the turtles, or try changing the size of the angle each of the turtles turns through. Then watch what happens when it is small, maybe zero or some negative number. Turn COLOR-SHIFT? on, and let CURR-COLOR-SEP become very large. You also should notice how COLOR-SEP (or really CURR-COLOR-SEP) alters the appearance of the kaleidoscope. At this point, the number of turtles who are born is roughly equal to the number who die at any given step. As the 'arm' turtles execute their commands much quicker than the hatched turtles, they produce many turtles during one loop of a circle eventually, though, turtles start to die off. The newly-hatched turtles begin to draw circles, self-destructing upon completion. Once one of the pattern buttons is pressed, each of these turtles (who compose the 'arms' of the kaleidoscope) repeatedly hatches a new turtle and turns by a single degree. Initially, upon setup, there are NTURTLES number of turtles. There are really two levels of turtle commands going on here. Right away, it becomes much larger than NUM-TURTLES, but quickly settles on some nice big number. What seems the best to you?Īn important thing to notice here is the number given in COUNT-TURTLES. See what different values of NUM-TURTLES and COLOR-SEP produce, and explore how COLOR-SHIFT changes the appearance of the kaleidoscope. This is meant to be a visually pleasing model just to watch. THINGS TO NOTICEįirst, just try playing around and observe what happens. You also have a monitor, CURR-COLOR-SEP, which will display that variable's value, so that you know when it has been altered, and by how much. The INCREASE-COLOR? switch determines if CURR-COLOR-SEP is increased (true) or decreased (false). This number is changed by a small random amount. Thus the slider value itself isn't changed, but the number the turtles look at is constantly changing. The COLOR-SHIFT button will either increment or decrement the value of COLOR-SEP used by the turtles - saved internally as CURR-COLOR-SEP. PATTERN-1 has the arms of the kaleidoscope all spiraling clockwise, while PATTERN-2 has the arms of the kaleidoscope spiral in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions, giving a slightly more complicated design.įinally, you have the power to change the color distribution exhibited by this model. Each pattern has its own forever-button that controls it. When you have set both NUM-TURTLES and COLOR-SEP, press the SETUP button to get your model ready for drawing. This inverse relation between COLOR-SEP and the color range is due to the fact that COLOR-SEP acts as a constant to divide a turtle's color by. For a nice, three-colored kaleidoscope, set COLOR-SEP to 25. The higher the value, the smaller the range. COLOR-SEP determines the range of colors that the turtles (and hence the kaleidoscope) will take on. Begin by setting this slider to the desired value (10 is fine). The NUM-TURTLES slider really determines the number of 'arms' or 'petals' that the kaleidoscope will have. While there are two built-in patterns for the model, both follow the same set of rules, with the only difference being that half of the drawing turtles in PATTERN-2 draw circles counterclockwise while all of the turtles in PATTERN-1 draw circles clockwise. In between hatchings, the only thing the original turtles are doing is slowly rotating. At each tick, every original turtle hatches a new 'drawing turtle' whose only job is to draw a circle and then immediately die. A number of turtles are created with their pen's down (wherever they move, they will draw a trail). The inner workings of the model are quite simple. It is a demonstration of how a set of simple agent rules can give rise to complex and beautiful patterns. This model uses NetLogo turtles to repeatedly draw circles, turning periodically so that the display gives the impression of a kaleidoscope or pinwheel. You can also Try running it in NetLogo Web

KALEIDOSCOPE DRAWING SOFTWARE DOWNLOAD

If you download the NetLogo application, this model is included.

Beginners Interactive NetLogo Dictionary (BIND)

Kaleidoscope drawing software