Author Topic: Tool for designing TH-variants  (Read 11028 times)

Troberg

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Tool for designing TH-variants
« on: March 28, 2012, 10:18:13 AM »
In an attempt to get a proper grip on TH knots and their variants, I made a program to design them and to get printable patterns and instructions.

Heavily inspired by GridMaker by Tim Allwine, but also fairly extendend and it doesn't use any of his codebase. If you are familiar with GridMaker, you will feel at home. It differs in (at least) the following ways:

* It's a Windows program, not web based. It will also run under Wine in Linux. I have nothing against the web, it's just a matter of my personal preference in development tools.
* It uses real world units (metric, get over it you backward USAians  :D  ), not pixels.
* It gives a good estimate of cord length needed. It's calculated without safety margins, though, so don't forget to add them.
* It gives the diameter the printed pattern will have when rolled on the dowel.
* It counts the number of over crossings and under crossings. For some patterns, these may be very different, and a lot of work can be saved by mirroring the pattern so that you'll get more over crossings and less under crossings.
* It has a print function that has the accuracy that the printer can provide, making it easier to get a good fit on the dowel. This is very difficult to get from a web app.
* The print function tiles properly, with clear numbers assisting assembly, should the pattern not fit on one page.
* The print function should properly handle any size paper (although I won't guarantee anything smaller than A4/US letter).
* The printed instructions are nicely "pyjama-striped" for clarity.
* It comes with a small library of preset patterns to start with. You can, of course, still provide your own patterns.
* It can save patterns, so that you can load them at a later time. The file extension is .thp.
* By clicking on the pattern image, you can flip any crossing back and forth between over and under, allowing patterns that are not symmetrical. This means that you can even do symbols and text!

The last point is, imho, by far the coolest. The rest may be practical, but that one is raw, primitive cool!

Download link (approx 1 MB): http://rpglab.net/nobackup/thmaker/THMaker-Setup.exe

Screenshots:


Heart. Is included as an example pattern as heart.thp.


An attempted knot with my girlfriends name, intended as a gift. It had too long between some over/under-switches, though, so I didn't manage to get it neat, things kept sliding sideways, so I tore it up and made a simpler design (the saved pattern "chevron.thp" included as an example in the download.

Usage is completely free, but if you want to give it to someone else, give them the link above, as that will always hold the latest version. The program is supplied as it, with no guarantees (except that I guarantee that I have not put any malicious code in it). That said, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Source code is probably not available, as I feel that it does not live up to my standards in code aesthetics.

I learned a lot about TH knots when I made this program, so if you are a programmer who can't get your TH's right, I challenge you to do a better program.You'll also learn a lot.

Pretty neat for a guy that has made less turks head than he has fingers (and who has a fairly average number of fingers), eh?

Wed

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #1 on: March 28, 2012, 12:44:34 PM »
Very interesting indeed.

If you considered making a native binary for Linux, or even better, a completely agnostic piece of software, you would have another user. Wine isn't my cup of ... tea.

My methods of making TH-knots doesn't require tools such as these. Still fun to play with of course.

Troberg

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #2 on: March 28, 2012, 01:35:30 PM »
Quote
If you considered making a native binary for Linux, or even better, a completely agnostic piece of software, you would have another user. Wine isn't my cup of ... tea.

Well, I actually prefer Linux and run it on most of my machines, but so far, I have not found any development environment I like for Linux, so no big chance for a native Linux version. Sorry.

Quote
My methods of making TH-knots doesn't require tools such as these. Still fun to play with of course.

Well, standard TH's are probably easy enough, but I wouldn't try to do text without a tool.

Wed

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #3 on: March 28, 2012, 03:26:03 PM »
Well, I actually prefer Linux and run it on most of my machines, but so far, I have not found any development environment I like for Linux, so no big chance for a native Linux version. Sorry.

Ok, I am not a coder, unless a little bit of assembly for PIC qualifies. When I don't use nano, Emacs is quite powerful. Maybe my hopes will survive, but I won't nourish it.

Quote
Well, standard TH's are probably easy enough, but I wouldn't try to do text without a tool.

CAD works. Qcad, or it's successor Librecad, has served me very well. Even for knotting. But actually, the most common pineapples, on top of arbitrary TH's and barber poles, don't need any tools. Those just require the key to be cracked.

Knot Head

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #4 on: March 28, 2012, 06:53:56 PM »
Tested on my vista ultimate 64 bit OS. Works just fine.

Simple to use and does not take much of a learning curve for a good piece of software. Very nice work.

B...
Regards,
Brian Kidd

KnotMe

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #5 on: March 29, 2012, 03:11:06 AM »
Well, I actually prefer Linux and run it on most of my machines, but so far, I have not found any development environment I like for Linux, so no big chance for a native Linux version. Sorry.

What language are you using?  C?  C++?  It could be others could convert if you want to open source it.

Another vote for emacs (or Xemacs 8) as a development environment (or editor on steroids, tom-A-toe, tom-AH-toe).

Troberg

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #6 on: March 29, 2012, 05:59:30 AM »
VB. I'm doing this on my own time, I'm not getting paid by the hour, so I used the tool that will let me gt the work done in the shortest time, and VB is excellent at doing apps like this that's mostly GUI (or mostly database frontends).

Troberg

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #7 on: March 30, 2012, 10:06:39 AM »
One small bug: In a few cases, it will allow you to make an impossible knot (for example a 5p20b). This only occurs when the lowest of parts and bights is a prime number which the larger of them is evenly dividable by, and even then, only in some cases.

The bug is fixed, but I wait a bit before I build and package a new version, in case some more bugs pop up.

So, in the mean time, check that you have the correct number of steps in the instructions (should be bights x 2 or (bights x 2)-1, depending on if its odd or even, if it's way smaller than that, then you've got an impossible knot).

Troberg

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #8 on: April 05, 2012, 09:55:29 AM »
OK, new version out. Nothing big, but fixes a few issues and has a couple of minor improvements.

* No longer allows "impossible knots".
* No longer jumps when scrolled down when clicking in the pattern.
* Now has the option of adding numbers to crossings along the "cut edges", to make it easier to follow where it should match up. Good if you like to do very long TH's and don't like to print out the pattern and tape it to the dowel.
* Now has the option to use Metric or US/Imperial units.

Probably a bunch of minor fixes I've already forgot about as well.

Not a necessary upgrade if you don't have problems with any of the issues above, but still recommended. Only takes a minute to upgrade anyway...

DarkSide

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #9 on: January 01, 2014, 11:43:58 PM »
Hello.. I was wondering if this it's still available? I hope it still does.. ?why? well.. a couple of TH "online" programs, after a while, they went offline..  So I guees It would be nice to have one on the computer..

Thanks, keep tying !! 

Groundline

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #10 on: February 12, 2014, 06:17:51 PM »
OK, new version out. Nothing big, but fixes a few issues and has a couple of minor improvements
...
Troberg, would you please make this available again. Thank you.
Don't look at the Sun.

Walter Seltzer

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Re: Tool for designing TH-variants
« Reply #11 on: February 27, 2014, 12:00:52 AM »
I would love to try this tool out, but when I click the link, nothing happens.  Help.  Thanks.
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