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The Hermes finite element library is now completely wrapped in Python and available in the Computing section of NCLab. This means that NCLab users can write their own advanced FEM programs using higher-order elements, automatic adaptivity, and other cool features of Hermes. The wrappers follow very closely the C++ version of the library, so C++

The textbook First Course in Programming with Karel the Robot and Python written by P. Solin and S. Dede is provided as a courtesy to NCLab users. Karel the Robot is a legendary educational programming language that was created at the Stanford University. Nowadays it is being used in many countries around the globe to

Recorded on May 31, 2012: NCLab and Its Satellites for Teaching Programming, Web Design and CAD. Be patient, the file has almost 100 MB.

  After significant restructuring of Karel’s internals, recursion was enabled. This is really cool, Karel now can traverse random binary trees, search random labyrinths, and do many other difficult tasks very elegantly!

Today we obtained permission from the Octave team to include Octave in NCLab. For those who do not know (is there anyone?), Octave is a free open source alternative to Matlab. Many students and researchers prefer Octave over Matlab not only for their love to open source software, but mainly because of Matlab’s licensing policy

After a careful evaluation of many pros and cons, today we replaced the “turn” command in Karel the Robot in NCLab with two commands “left” and “right”. The main reason was that in more complicated tasks such as navigating through a maze, the robot was basically only rotating, resembling a small tornado. I already changed

                  Today NCLab was presented to a computer science instructor at Coral Academy (CA) in Reno. CA is an exemplary high school for math, science, and engineering. The instructor liked it a lot and specifically he said that Karel the Robot was much better than Scratch (another

  This is a 3D solid model of the SWE logo created in NCLab. We are very proud to join our forces with the Society of Women Engineers in outreach to K-12 education!

PLaSM (Programming Language of Solid Geometry) is a powerful library for 3D Design. This technology is sometimes also called Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) and it is part of all modern CAD systems. One can use PLaSM in NCLab to create parts of machines, buildings, and much more. Try it yourself, it is very simple and

Today I created a first tutorial video “NCLab for K-12” that describes what NCLab is and how K-12 teachers can use it in classroom. Since I was in the recording room and I had some time left, I also created a first tutorial video for Karel the Robot. I am not very satisfied with any