1A NURBSNurbs are a method of computationally mod-elling curves by generating and storing them mathematically in relation to a set of user defined control points. They’re useful for creating and ed-iting continuous, adjustable, curvilinear geometry. This concept can be extended into three dimen-sional space to generate NURBS surfaces.

1B POINTSGlobal coordinates refer to the base cartesian axes set up for a certain thing (in this case likely a rhino document). Geometry in this thing can be referenced according to these coordinates, by specifying units of measurement from the origin along each axis. Other planes of measurement can exist within this space, which themselves may located relative to the global origin.

A point in 3d space can be defined by it’s X, Y and Z coordinates. These refer to it’s distance from the origin in each of these dirextions. Moving the point around this space will be reflected in its coordinates eg moving further away from the origin parallel to the x axis in a positive direction will increase the x value.

Coordinates are typically notated in the form (x, y, z) In grasshopper, using the deconstruct point component will return each of the X, Y, and Z components as single variables.

1C VECTORSA vector is a way to mathematically represent direction and magnitude, like an arrow. It can be expressed geometrically, with cartesian coor-dinates, with polar coordinates, and other fun ways. A unit vector is a vector with a magnitude of one, which can be derived from any vector and is useful if you’re only interested in the vec-tors direction. A tangent is a straight line (or vec-tor) that can be drawn just touching curve which will run in the same direction as the curve at that point, ie the derivative of the curve at this loca-tion. A normal is a line or vector running perpen-dicular (90 degrees) to a pieced of geometry. In 2D space this will be a line/vector, in 3D it will be a plane

1D PLANEA plane is a flat piece of 2D geometry. In rhino it may refer to a 3D set of coordinates. Planes can be created, positioned and oriented within 3D space in rhino to assist with positioning and orienting other geometry. They consist of an origin relative to the world coordinates and an X, Y and Z axis, which can be extracted using a “decon-struct plane” component in grasshopper. The axis can then be repesented as vectors and the origin as a point.

1E ListsA list is a collection of any item. It can be sorted into tree format or remain all jumbeled togeth-er. There are multiple components available to rearrange the items in a list. Lists are important for working with a number of an object.

1FA data tree is a way of sorting lists into sublists, and possibly further into more sublists and so on. A branch then refers to the invidual directories at the end of the list.