My first year in University was really boring.
I remember getting up at 6:00am (that was early for me then), dragging my feet into a lecture at 8:00am only to be bombarded with math equations that I didn’t care about.
Engineering “foundations” they called it. It was topics on vectors, linear algebra, integrals.... It’s like high school math on steroids. And I was bored out of my mind.
I remember this one topic that was a really good bedtime story. It was “understanding an equation of a line”. I mean, why ? Why did anyone even come up with this ? Who on earth was so bored that they decided to look at a line and go “I think we can draw this using math”.
It’s a line. Use a pen.
Life was no different after university either. Every time I wanted to learn something new, each online course I took always started out with the “foundations” or “basics”. I remember when I first started learning Rhino and Grasshopper, I had to first learnt where every button and command before doing anything real.
And if going through that period meant mastery, that would have been fine. But I forgot everything. I was bored out of my mind, I couldn’t remember any of the features when it came time to solve problems.
That experience is actually why I am such a big proponent of project learning. Of learning within the right context and not just learning for the sake of it. You don’t need to know what every single button does before you learn to solve problems. You need to know what is relevant and how to build the skillset to solve your problem.
But I know that getting started on a new program can be overwhelming, which is why we all take courses. But when those courses force you through just the “basics”, it can really demotivate you. Then you’re just in a spiral, wanting to learn but each course you take sucks the motivation out of you, so you quit. Then, you get the itch to learn again, so you take another course and the cycle keeps repeating.
What you actually need is a course that is short, shows you the relevant basics, and gives you enough autonomy to take your own learning into your own hands.
It’s what I wished I had when I first started. Someone to just show me where things are and how things roughly work, so that I can start applying them to my own problems.
I looked for something like that when I first started out but I couldn’t find it. So I made one for Grasshopper.
A Primer in Grasshopper
I built this course to give you enough familiarity with Grasshopper to start making things and learning from the problems you run into.
It’s eight short but dense lessons, designed to get you reading and modifying Grasshopper scripts. I’ve kept the foundations compact so you can get started without spending weeks learning every feature.
You start with how Rhino and Grasshopper work together. Then, we’ll walk through algorithmic thinking and how to work with data, including lists and data trees. Along the way, we’ll build models, and the homework gives you a chance to try things yourself. Each assignment has a solution, with working files you can refer to afterwards.
The aim is to get you comfortable enough to start tackling your own problems. As you build more scripts, you’ll have reasons to explore the parts of Grasshopper that matter for your work.
If that sounds like the starting point you need, the course is here : A Primer in Grasshopper