Getting Started

Requirements

Helipad can be installed using either Pip or Conda. From your command prompt, just run one

pip install helipad

or

conda install -c charwick helipad

which will install all the required packages automatically. The requirements are:

  1. Python 3.8 or higher — Helipad does not run on Python 2.
  2. Matplotlib — Supports visualization capabilities
  3. Pandas — Manages data collection and export
  4. Networkx — For network analysis and spatial visualizations

These are not required, but if present, will enable additional features:

  1. Jupyter, Ipywidgets, and ipympl — to run Helipad in Jupyter notebooks
  2. Shapely — for geospatial models

Building a Model

There is a bootstrap model with the minimal structure necessary to build a model, along with code comments to guide you. For something more substantive, there is also a walkthrough for the process of creating a price discovery model with random matching. It will also be important to understand hooks to create models.

When you get to creating your own models, the hook and function reference will be an invaluable guide. Examples will be filled in, and feel free to contribute your own notes and snippets.

For more advanced users, there is also a tutorial for creating completely custom Matplotlib visualizations that can be used as subplots in the Charts visualizer.