How to Create Line Fractal Design

  1. Select Design\Examples\Line Fractals
  2. In the new dialog box, choose the number of segments (2 to 15). This can be done from the dropdown list.
  3. The design is constructed by moving the endpoints of the segments.
  4. You can change the number of segments using the plus and minus buttons. The plus button will add a point to the middle of the segment to the left of the currently chosen green point. If no point is currently chosen, the new point will be added to the last segment. The minus button will delete the currently chosen green point. If no point is currently chosen, the penultimate point will be removed.
  5. Click the Reset button to rearrange all the points to be equally spaced along a horizontal or vertical line, depending on the current direction choice.
  6. The horizontal and vertical radio buttons will orient the drawing in the chosen direction. In the vertical direction the base point will be at the bottom of the window.
  7. For non-oriented segments, check "Show Preview" to see a rough approximation of the fractal generated from the design. The preview will change as you move the points.
  8. Click on "Create IFS" when done. The program will, by default, use a unit horizontal or vertical line to illustrate the design. The picture in the design window will be the same as the generator constructed by moving the points.
  9. For non-oriented segments, check "Use recursion" (which is the default value) to quickly draw each iteration in the fractal window in the deterministic mode using recursion. You will see the iteration count followed by "w/Rec" in this case. The design polygon should be a horizontal or vertical line, and the initial set for the deterministic drawing should be the design polygon (outline). These are the default choices. Any other choice will cause the program to use the usual deterministic drawing method. You must leave the line fractal design window open to use recursion (although you may minimize it to get it out of the way.)
    Warning: Attempting to draw too many iterations using recursion may crash the program and/or freeze your computer. There is no way to stop the drawing in the middle of a recursive drawing except by using ctrl-alt-del to kill the application, so be careful using recursion! The program will attempt to calculate the largest number of iterations before new line segments are less than the size of a pixel. Any iterations after that using recursion will not produce any change in the image.
  10. The "Cancel" button will close the window and cause the program to revert back to the previous IFS.
  11. You can copy the image to the clipboard with the standard Copy menu command (or type ctrl-C), or you can click in the picture box with the right mouse button to get a contextual menu with options to copy the image or save it to a file in gif, png, jpeg, or bitmap format.
  12. You can zoom or shift the drawing window using the page up/down keys or the arrow keys, respectively. Pressing the Home key will restore the drawing window to the default scale.
  13. You can also specify the location of the endpoints of the line segments by reading the coordinates from a file. Click on the open file button. The format of the text file is similar to that of an ifs file. The set of points starts after the opening bracket. Comments can be specified by starting the line with a semicolon. The points should be given one per line, concluding with a closing bracket. Here is an example of the terdragon constructed from a line fractal design (see image below):
    Line Fractal Design
    ; terdragon
     0 , 0 
     0.5 , 0.2886751
     0.5 , -0.2886751 
     1 , 0 
    }
    
  14. Click on the save file button to save the set of endpoints in the current design to a text file.

Some Examples of Line Fractal Designs

linefractalwindowdesign1

linefractaldesign2b

linefractaldesign3b linefractalexampledet3