Something bothered me when I started learning computational design. It was how much time I wasted on unnecessary learning. Reflecting on it recently, I felt a need to share those tips to aspiring computational designers to not replicate the mistakes I've done despite having forged myself very solid knowledge.

Here are 5 mistakes I did when learning:

1. Consuming more than practicing

With the ocean of videos and tutorials available online, the Easiest trap to fall into when learning computational design is spending more time watching than actually practicing. Yes you need to learn the concept first. But ultimately, the biggest part of learning is when you fail, when you try things out, when you confront the problem.

When you write a line of code and it fails, it stays in your mind. Your eyes saw the error. Next time you are about to make the same mistake, your eyes will recognize it before your brain. And you'll avoid it. Remember that failure is the only way to success.

2. Focusing on tools instead of fundamentals

You're learning to automate on Revit? Great. You need to learn 2 things: How Revit works (if you dont) and how coding works. If you're still struggling to type a function after already 1 week of learning then you know what you lack is fundamentals and not Revit knowledge. Understanding what a class is will help you understand deeply the structure of Revit. Something’s even cooler: your fundamentals apply to other software and other coding languages! A loop in Python is still a loop in C# or TypeScript. Classes and their hierarchy are the essence of software. Being able to navigate and manipulate it easily is a skill every computational designers MUST have.

Focus on what's reusable, refine specificities after.

3. Bulk learning

In computational design, and especially with Grasshopper, a common learning mistake is to learn plenty of component behaviors right from the start. Worse, you may be still focusing on it while you're already quite advanced in your learning journey.

The reality? You will stick to the same 20-30 components in your GH definitions as time goes by. Why would you learn to master mesh components when most of your work is done with BReps? Your time is a limited resource and using it wisely during your learning journey will make the difference. Learn what is relevant to your current situation, not what people give you.

4. Thinking you are alone

In our era, resources are accessible from anywhere, to anyone and at anytime. So we tend to tell ourselves we can just go through that material and learn on our own. Sure, you can. But is this material even applicable for your discipline? Possibly. And possibly not. Finding a mentor or a community is a good way to get rid of those doubts as they will be able to orient you to relevant resources to your discipline. It's always a good idea to have someone you can rely on and ask all your questions. Once again, your time is limited, you don't want to waste it on irrelevant learning. That's exactly what we try to solve at PatchWork. Mentorship in computational design is almost inexistent. Come join our free community gathering aspiring and expert computational designers.

One question helps two people so ask any questions to our PatchWorkers.

5. Watch tutorials irrelevant to you

Watching voronoi patterns video while youre looking to create I-beam parametrically? Yes computational design tutorial diversity can be limited. But you don't need to watch something irrelevant to you. Our community is growing and more and more discipline-specific contents are being uploaded. This issue strongly relates with the mentorship I was raising earlier in this article. Ask to more senior computational designers from your discipline which tutorial is nice for your unique background. Optimize your learning journey at every level!

To conclude, it is not easy to navigate this very unique discipline which is computational design. Not only does it seem to be architecture-relevant only but the limited engineering content makes it even less accessible to engineers. We are pushing to make it more engineering accessible and to structure it takes time. If you haven't done it yet, feel free to explore our different trainings and resources. As time goes by, more content will be uploaded and shared through our newsletter.

Benjamin Tan