4.3.3 Making a New Environment

Now we can create the Environment and the training patterns. Locate the Project window (which you'll note has been updated to reflect the existence of your new Network object), and select .environments / New / Environment and Ok. Your EnviroView window will appear. Then click New Event. Set the number to create to 4, then click Ok. You should see Panel buttons for all four events ("Event_0".."Event_3"). Left-click the first one to select it for viewing, then extend-select (middle-click or Shift + left-click) the rest in order, and all of them will appear to the right of the buttons. They automatically have an input pattern the same size as the input layer and an output or target pattern the same size as the output layer, and all the values of all of the patterns are initialized to 0. Both input and output patterns are displayed with the top four boxes of each event represent the output target values and the lower four boxes representing the input values. You can now set the 1 bits of each pattern by clicking on the color spot next to the value field labeled '1', then clicking on the appropriate elements of the pattern. They will turn to the appropriate color, indicating the specified value. You have to click Apply for the change to take effect. Now you have your environment.

You can also use this EnviroView window to configure the layout of the patterns within the events according to the EventSpec and PatternSpec specs. The default layout (which works for our present purposes) is to have one pattern for the first layer in the network, which serves as an input, and another pattern for the last layer in the network, which serves as an output. However, these defaults will not always be appropriate. To see how to change them, hit the Edit Specs button at the top left of the window, and then after the display changes, hit the EventSpec_0 button. You will see two grids for the two patterns (input and output). You can move, reshape, and edit these patterns if you need to. The text within each pattern shows some of the critical settings in terms of whether an pattern is an INPUT or TARGET, what layer it goes to, etc. We'll just leave everything as-is for now, but if for example you wanted to change the network to be a 8-3-8 encoder, then you'd need to reshape these patterns to be 8 units wide instead of 4. Doing so would automatically stretch the corresponding events that use this spec.

For now, just hit Edit Events to return to the events display, and iconify the window.