It was 2008, eCAADe Presentation at Antwerp together with Birgül Çolakoğlu and Serkan Uysal.

The work presented in this paper, is an example of student work developed in Introduction to Computational Design  graduate course titled “Designing the Design”  at Yildiz Technical University. The course focuses on the use of algorithms as design tools, rather than coding experiments. The course runs parallel to shape grammar course, in which basic concepts of computation is thought through visual design exercises. The shape grammar course teaches rule based logic, algorithmic thinking and formal approach to design. In this course, Islamic star patterns that depict a variety of geometrical structures and constraints of the Euclidean shapes are used to teach above mentioned concepts. The presented work named PatGen: Islamic Star Pattern Generator is developed by Serkan Uysal as final project for above briefly explained courses.

Computational design education encourages design students to improve their “competitive edge” by cross training in computational science and arts. The course presented in this paper emphasizes that computational thinking is not only programming but rather conceptualizing that operates in the multiple layers of abstraction simultaneously. It points out that computational thinking is abstract, involves problem-solving and is a contemporary design skill. It explores new ways of teaching computational design to students who do not have background in computation but are educated as designers. It introduces the students with systematic thinking and formal languages and teaches them basic concepts of programming with 3rd generation CAD software that utilize the graphic capabilities of symbolic computation through scripting.

Here is the full paper for further information: [PDF File]. And here is the MaxScript file if you want to test (compatible with MAx 2011, menu is in Turkish):  [MSE File]Just select “Run script” from MaxScript menu and point to the file.