I’m trying to build a hollow geodesic dome for any scale and with separate segments (otherwise I could just pop into blender and do it from there).
I’ve been trying to do it by putting separate segments together, but it just never looks right and/or parts are completely off. Are there any tools, resources that can make this alot easier? Do I need to use a script to assemble the shape correctly?
You can use unions but I think blender is the best way to do so in this case
going off what @VegetationBush mentioned, blender would most likely be the best way to go about this. Because the default shape that makes up spheres in blender are squares, I recommend using the Triangulate & Solidify modifiers, both found under Modifiers → Generate (subsection)
The triangulate modifier is if you want the shapes to be triangles if that’s the look you’re going for.
Hope this helped!
Interesting question. I’ll reply with a building solution in a bit.
I’ve gone about this build a couple different ways in the past hour or two, and one method has worked the best so far. The connections may not be 100% clean right away, but there are ways to hide or repair those (such as cutting them off with a negative part, or hiding it completely with a decorative piece)
Also, I have not worried myself too much with proper lengths and so on, as I’m more concerned with showing and explaining the process behind the build.
Rather than start off with a triangle, I instead began with the three points which make up a triangle. These will be useful, and not for the reason of creating the triangle - more on this later.
Here are the distances between each point. The size of each point is 1x1x1.
To create the triangle, use the Gapfill plugin and click between the correct edges. (The short lines represent where you should click with gapfill)
If done correctly, you should end up with something like shown above.
Next we will generate the full circle using Archimedes 2. Make sure your triangle is grouped first. I used a degree of 24. The purpose of generating the circle now is to serve more as a guideline and extra points to gapfill between, rather than pieces to be worked upon separately. They will be deleted when we no longer need them.
It’s at this point which the red squares become useful to us. If we were to simply duplicate the bottom circle, move it up, and rotate it 12 degrees, you’d end up with something ugly like this:
Using the red squares and Gapfill, we can create the next level up - but we run into a new issue:
The new part is properly leveled and angled, but it doesn’t connect right with the top point of our bottom triangle.
It’s for this reason the next step is to resize the point to line up with the edges of our triangle, like so:
In my case, I had to resize the part .5 in both directions. With that done, the new part is now correct and lined up. It may not be perfect, but it is an easily adjustable and repeatable process. After you’re done with this step, you can return the part to its original 1x1x1 size in preparation for the next step…
…which is to repeat step 1 and gapfill between the edges. The new parts that are generated with gapfill will consist of multiple parts, and that is because the two red parts we generate between this time are no longer the same angle.
The next step is to rotate the second layer triangle. For this you will need to have each part of that triangle grouped except for the bottom two red points and grey part.
Using your building plugin of choice, (I will be using SBS) you can select the triangle model and then rotate it using the grey base of that same triangle as a pivot point. With my version of SBS, you can do this by:
With this done you should be able to rotate the triangle any degree you wish in the correct direction. It will probably result in some parts poking through, but that is where the unioning, slight resizing, or hiding comes into play.
It will be useful at this point to establish a centerpoint in the middle of your circle. The way to do this is by gapfilling between two points that are of equal angle to each other, andequal distance away from the exact center. Unfortunately, an issue arises where we do not have both of these conditions met, as no triangle segment has one opposite to it of equal angle:
Luckily, we can still rotate using the “invisible” centerpoint by selecting one triangle from each side. I recommend duplicating two triangles from each side, and moving it x studs away away from your build so it doesn’t interfere. We can then rotate by 12 degrees (since that is half of the original 24 degrees used to create the circle, we can get at least one triangle to line up) If you select RotateGroup with SBS, you’ll notice the axis is centered between both sides.
Follow the example below, and you will see that we end up with two triangles that meet the required conditions.
All you have to do now is gapfill, and you should end up with one single part which can then be resized 1x1x1. The part will be small and out of your way then, and you’ll see it is perfectly centered. If you end up with super thin wedge meshes on the sides of your gapfill, you can delete those.
Once your centerpoint is in position, you can also delete all of the extra “guide” triangles you didn’t work on. Your build should look like this:
You can also group all three triangles together.
The final step in this sequence is to create a new circle by rotating your new triangle section. You can do this by selecting the RotatePivot tool in SBS, and mousewheel clicking the centerpoint to set it as the rotation axis. Duplicate your triangle (you may need to mousewheel click the centerpoint again after duplicating)
Now your dome should start taking shape. You have a new set of guide pieces to repeat the process until you have a full segment built.
Good luck, and feel free to let me know if you have any more questions - because almost anything is possible in studio, and you should usually never accept the “do it in blender” answers that are so prevalent.
Thank you for your reply @fourpapa1, unfortunately it does not correspond to the icosphere that is often subdivided to generate an geodesic dome. Generally I thought simply building it would be less tedious with some magical secret method that would allow me to create a perfect geodesic dome.
I’m also really surprised that there is no icosphere with subdivisions generator plugin, if I ever get to refining the script for it I might put it into a plugin for others to use.
Thanks for the help anyway!
