Quick-Start Tutorials

The following sections will guide you through large parts of Cinderella's functions. After working through the tutorials you should be able to use Cinderella.2. You can look up other functions in the reference part of this manual. Most of the functions described there follow patterns that are explained in the tutorials.

Here are a few general instructions on how to use these tutorials.

• Read the texts carefully. When you come to a new section of the tutorial, read it first completely. Then you should read it again, while you perform the described actions.
• Follow the instructions exactly. The tutorials ask you to create constructions in a certain order. If you do not follow the prescribed order, the labeling of your elements will be different from that in the tutorial.
• If you make a mistake in a geometric construction, you always have the opportunity to undo the last step by pressing the "Undo" button in the toolbar. You can undo as many steps as you want.
• The pictures in the tutorials are intentionally low-resolution screenshots. That should make it easy to match these drawings with the actual situation on your screen.

Each tutorial focuses on a particular topic. As the tutorials progress, the information provided by the text becomes less and less detailed. We assume that it is helpful in the very beginning to be told precisely what to do. The more advanced you become, the more freedom you will have to do the operations. There are three tutorials:

• Pappus's Theorem: This tutorial introduces you to the basic construction principles of Cinderella. You will learn how to do a simple construction.

• Three-Bar Linkage: Here you will learn how to use the animation features of Cinderella. You will also learn how to produce geometric loci.

• Kepler Ellipses: Here you will learn how to use the physics simulation engine CindyLab in a very simple example.

• Scripting the Seeds of a Sunflower: Here you will learn how to perform simple drawing operations with CindyScript. You will also learn how to combine CindyScript with the geometry part of Cinderella.