Here are the beginnings of a guide for getting started in Abundance
@kenedove Hello, I don’t have a good way to do videos at the moment but to get started with abundance here is a small guide. I am having some fun writing one tonight. I may have made a mistake. if you see any let me know. Abundance runs in your web browser as a webpage hosted on Github’s servers. There is nothing to download.
Chapter 1 To get started:
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open this webpage and make an account https://abundance.maslowcnc.com/
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Click at the top left here on NEW PROJECT
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Name your project. Then click the Submit/export button at the bottom
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When your project opens we will start by clicking on the faint little circle with an i in it in the top right corner. This is where the settings for the view and the help guide are located.
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There is a user guide at the bottom of this menu, but what we are after at the moment is settings. This is also where you will save your project. It will auto save periodically but you can make sure it is saved before closing the window here.
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In SETTINGS we will click on canvas Settings and then on the box marked shortcut helper. Click on Save Changes. This will make faint text appear in our programming window with useful shortcuts.
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The dark top half of the screen is your programming window. The bottom light half is the 3D view of your object. When you are working on a small part it will show that brighter with a ghost of the OUTPUT of the whole programming window overlayed. The top of the screen is where we can make things happen the bottom of the screen is only for showing us a view. You can’t move things or draw in the bottom pane.
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Abundance uses a node based programming language. Each part of the program is a circle called an ATOM that has inputs and outputs shown as little circles on the sides of it. The program generally moves from left to right across the screen. Circles on the left of atoms are inputs, circles on the right are outputs. We drag the circles to connect inputs and outputs. When we do, it will show a line connecting the parts of the program.
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Let’s make a new atom. Right click in the empty black space at the top of the screen. A circle menu will show up. Each part of the circle menu has a sub menu of atoms that you can select inside it.
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Practice moving around the menus. We are going to make a rectangle. move to the right side of the circle for shapes and then move down one space to find the rectangle tool.
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Wen you make a rectangle a new atom will appear in the top half of the screen and a rectangle shape will be visible in the xy plane in the bottom half of the screen. Now that we have something to look at, practice turning and zooming in and out of the view at the bottom.
- CLICKING AND DRAGGING rotates the view. Watch the little axes in the bottom right corner to orient yourself.
- CLICKING ON THE AXES selects top and side views.
- RIGHT CLICK pans from side to side. It also resets the center of rotation. Sometimes when i get lost doing this I save my project and then reopen it to find the center again.
- CENTER MOUSE SCROLL or TWO FINGERS on a trackpad zoom in and out.
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Also in the bottom pane of the window is the number input panel. It can can be hidden and shown by clicking on the TOP OF THE THREE SQUARES and you can enter numerical or variable information for the atom that is selected in the top there. To select an atom to edit it’s numbers click on it and it will turn dark. Let’s edit our rectangle by changing it’s numbers. The default is to work in mm. Maslow thinks in mm but you can change the units in the settings.
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Now we have a rectangle let’s make it 3D. Right click in the top pane, rotate around to the bottom left part and select EXTRUDE.
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If I had already selected my rectangle they would be automatically connected by an input/output line. I did not have my rectangle selected so my two atoms are just hanging there and need to be connected. I can grab the output of the RECTANGLE and drag it across to make a connection. In this case the rectangle is a flat shape that is then changing from left to right as it is fed through the extrude node to make it 3D. Connections are different types of information. there are numbers, flat shapes (called sketches), and threeD shapes. Both flat shapes and 3D shapes are called GEOMETRY but sometimes they act differently.
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Once I have made a connection I can edit any number in the string of programming nodes and the whole thing will change. On the lower left of the computer screen there are three small squares, click on the top one to open or close the atom detail window. Try changing the X, Y and height sizes of your two atom system to change the dimensions of your new box.
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Let’s ROTATE our new box. Click once in the empty space of the dark top pane to delselect anything and then right click to pull up the new atom circle menu and go to the bottom left part of the circle menu to find a ROTATE atom.
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Click on it, connect your extruded shape to it and then try entering values to make it turn in space. It will turn around the origin of the graphing space where the three axes intersect. You are rotating it by spinning it around each of the axis lines.
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Finally let’s move the box away from the center of the space. CLICK and then RIGHT CLICK in the empty dark top pane to make a new atom. Go to the bottom left and click on MOVE
Connect it by dragging the output of the ROTATE atom to it’s GEOMETRY input. The inputs will light up blue to tell you which input you are connecting to. You can select an input and click delete to break it. or you can replace one input with a different one to break it. Move your box.
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Try going back and editing other numbers in your string of programming atoms to change the place and size of your box.
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ORDER MATTERS Let’s break some connections and rearrange things and see what that does. Click on each of the Atoms and click on the GEOMETRY input. You should see the connection to the next atom turn dark and thick. CLICK DELETE on your keyboard. The connection should go away. You can move the atoms around by dragging them. Connect them in a different order.
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As you click through the string of logic you will see your shape change and move as each command and modification is acted on. I like to try to keep my atoms lined up in a logical order in the screen so future me or someone else can understand the string of logic.
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Ok, Make another string this time starting with a CIRCLE, then EXTRUDE, then ROTATE, then MOVE to make a cylinder next to the rectangular box. Move them around until they cross over each other.
TWO NOTES:- when rotating a 2D shape, it will bring it’s axis along with it. so it is always in it’s own xy plane that then can be extruded into it’s own z plane. Once it is 3D it joins the general 3D axis. Play with this.
- There are multiple ways to get to the same result. See if you can find two ways to rearrange your atoms with different numbers but still get to the same place.
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It would be nice if we could see the two shapes together and make them interact. For this to be interesting, they will need to cross through each other a little bit. Right click in the dark upper pane, and move to the center right side of the circle menu. This menu is for combining shapes. The top four options as you go around the circle menu are BOOLEAN OPERATIONS They combine two or more 2D or two or more 3D shapes (can’t mix) like a VENN DIAGRAM.
Make one and Drag your two shapes over as inputs to see what each one does. Try INTERSECTION, DIFFERENCE, ASSEMBLY, and FUSION The bottom two options in the interaction menu we will come back to later. SHRINK WRAP makes a common perimeter loop around two 2D shapes sharing the same plane and glues them together in one big 2D shape. LOFT does the same for 2D shapes not in the same plane stretching around them in order to make a snakey shape with the 2D starting shapes as cross sections. They are good for getting more complicated shapes.NOTE: ASSEMBLY groups a bunch of shapes together and cuts interfering chunks off of each other as they are added. They stay as separate shapes. FUSION just makes one big shape out of all of them with no breaks. It is possible to pull a shape out of an intersection using TAGS.
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Right now Let’s just make an ASSEMBLY of our two objects. Right click in the open space at the top. Rotate around to the lower right side of the circle menu and select assembly. Then Drag the geometry outputs from each of the shapes to the input side of ASSEMBLY. As you add more parts to the assembly it will keep adding one more open input.
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Over on the center of the right side of the dark top pane there is a triangle shape called OUTPUT. It is the thing that will be sent out from your project. This is mostly important if you were going to use your project as a smaller part of another project. If you made a door handle then you could output that door handle and later make a door project where you could import it. If something isn’t logically connected through the nodes to the output triangle it won’t affect the final shape.
This should get you started making and moving some shapes. If it is useful let me know and when I have time I can write some more.
Here is the link to my Learning project so you can play with that: you can’t mess mine up .
https://abundance.maslowcnc.com/run/wouldchuckit/learning_
To see the insides of someone else’s project you have to FORK it. It is the last box on the list of little boxes on the right side of the screen when looking at a project. When you FORK you are making your own copy. Also when you first open a model it has to compute all of the way through it before we see an output on the lower screen. When Atoms have not computed they are light blue, when they are missing info they are yellow and when they have stalled they are red. Sometimes you can go to the i circle menu and RECOMPUTE and that will get things started again.
When you enter someone else’s model you may need to adjust your view settings. Remember they are in the i menu at the top right of the screen. For mine you will probably need to make the atom size small. In the example I had it big. In a more complicated project the circles would overlap too much.
If you can’t see someone else’s project try changing the atom size smaller:
I would recommend as an exercise, to open someone else’s project and start clicking from left to right to see what they are doing to make the final shape. There is a big idea that we have not covered yet. You can make projects of atoms inside other projects called Molecules. If you double click on a molecule you will enter that mini project. to get back out click on the tiny grey carrot arrow ^ next to the information menu in the top right corner of the top screen.
If a project is stalled computing and a molecule inside it is light blue, you may need to go inside it to get it to compute. Double click, let it compute and then go back up using the arrow in the top right corner.
Try poking left to right through my model of a table.
https://abundance.maslowcnc.com/run/wouldchuckit/Table_With_Tapered_Legs_and_Rounded_Corners
Double click on LEG to see how the leg molecule is made then click on the arrow to get back to the main project. Double click on TOP to look at the top. Work your way across the project to follow the logic. I have done a lot of calculations inside the atoms to make them go where I want them to go. You don’t have to do that. You can just use numbers.
Here is a model of Maslow4 with lots of little atoms inside.
Double Click on CLAMP, MOTOR, ROD and ARM to look inside those molecules.
https://abundance.maslowcnc.com/run/wouldchuckit/RoughMaslowModel
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