I'd like to plot a large number of circles on the screen (say 10000 or more) at a set of (x,y) locations defined on a grid. I'm wondering what would be the best way of approaching this problem in Pd? I could prefix my (x,y) pairs with a counter and then create a [route] object with 10000 outlets, each connected to a [translateXYZ] and [circle] object. However, this type of approach does not seem very practical/scalable (and I don't want to connect 10000 outlets by hand). I could accomplish this fairly easily in Processing (with a few lines of code), but I'm not sure the best way of doing this in Pd/GEM/gridflow.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

see [repeat] with tables to define coordinates.

Thanks for the suggestion. However, coming up with the coordinates is not my problem (I have a counter followed by a [mod] object that produces a list of (x,y) coordinates just fine). My problem is this: how do I draw 10000 separate circles, without using 10000 separate [circle] objects?

Right now I have a patch working that draws a single circle, and that circle will move to a new grid point each time I bang the counter. I guess what I want is a simple way to stop the background from updating, so that I get the appearance of many circles by drawing one circle at several locations.

Things like recursion are not usually handled in Pd the same way as in Processing. Sure, you could play with the buffer setting of your gemwin, but... Really, look in the help files : Gem/examples/13.recursion, that's where you'll learn how to "draw 10000 separate circles, without using 10000 separate [circle] objects".

Thanks for the suggestion. Examples on recursion would most certainly be helpful. In fact, I referred to the help files before posting, however the Gem/examples/13.recursion examples are missing in my build of Pd-extended (I'm running 0.42.5 on os x). I'll try and track down those examples elsewhere and see if they help me out.

Try the brand new 0.43.4

Thanks for all the help. I just wanted to say I got the example I was trying to recreate working (i.e., drawing a grid of circles to the screen and adjusting the radius and color of each one based on a video feed). The critical objects I needed were [repeat] and [separator].

frankchannel, i just posted on what seems a very similar topic. i'd be interested to see how your patch works.

You should try [gemvertexbuffer] !

Oh la la! Sounds like it would work, just from the name...

Actually, is there a list of objects with short descriptions of their functions? It's hard to open every help patch to get a sense of what's what while I'm still learning.

So I just got to my computer, and it seems I don't have that object. Any ideas how I can add it? I'm using 0.43.4-extended on Snow Leopard.

mhhh. Unfortunately it seems that you have to compile it (or the whole Gem). i do not remember how i got it.
Have a look at Aluan Wang's blog : http://www.dazegraffiti.com/2013/04/p5-4-2.html
He's into repetition and tables, study his patches !

I was able to compile it successfully with the tarball provided in this thread, and the corrected Makefile provided at the end of this thread: http://markmail.org/thread/uc4jkcxxazb6o5sp

(For those following this thread who are even less acquainted with compiling things from source than I am, I had to download the source code for Pd-extended, and alter the Makefile to point to the locations of the required files in the source code.)

It works, but I don't know exactly how to apply it to my scenario. I understand that it's rendering geos by reading arrays... but I'm not clear how it is that one chooses exactly what kind of geo gets rendered? Other than the triangle / point / whatever messages?

Also, I suggest we move this back to my original posting here: http://puredata.hurleur.com/sujet-8930-manipulating-recursive-grids-geos.