Clock Evolution Program

[Nathan Hepperle]

About a year ago I made a program to create unique and random clocks.
The program currently outputs a list of all the gears that the clock
needs, which gears require hands, and how well the clock measures each
period of time. I hope at least one of you will find it useful or
interesting.

I tried to move all of the settings into the ClockSettings.java file
in order to make it at least somewhat easy to change the constraints
the program places on the clock (seed, periods of time to measure,
number of gears to use, number of teeth on the gears, etc.).

One of the things I never got around to doing was arranging a way to
generate a 3d render, however the program still outputs an easily
parsable line at the end of the report containing the gear ratios,
pendulum length, and hand locations for that clock if anyone wants to
give it a shot.

If you have any questions or if you find that I buggered an equation
somewhere feel free to let me know.

The program is Public Domain so feel free to modify/distribute all you
want.

You can download the Java source files at either dropbox or via a
magnet link
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33350427/ClockGA.zip
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:
30cf7d4819e506a74b06ded41d03efb6762fffaf&dn=ClockGA.zip

[Mathieu Glachant]

I love this project. It shouldn't be a huge deal creating a little
parser that grabbed the clock parameters from your clock settings file
and fed it to the clock builder script... but that script does max it
out at 8 gears total and individual gear ratios around 8:1 or so.

We could run your program with a set of constraints that keep results
within the bounds of what can be output by the OpenSCAD script as well
as printed by a Thingomatic... and then print a few generations of
clocks.