A cheap way to make a geodesic dome

I've been paining myself on how folks have made geodesic domes. It seems like an awful lot of work to do, and it must be pretty difficult to get everything all lined up. Then it occurred to me that Lightwave Modeler has all the necessary tools to do this quickly and very easily.

Here's a quick cheat-sheet recipe:

  1. Open modeler and select the new Ball tool. Open the Numeric panel and change the type to Tessellation. Leave all the defaults alone. Close the tool.
  2. Select the bottom half of the sphere and delete it.
  3. Select all the polygons and change the surface name to Beams.
  4. Select the Bevel tool and open the Numeric panel.
  5. Apply a bevel of 1.25mm shift and 1.25mm inset.
  6. Apply another bevel of -1.25mm shift and 1.25mm inset.
  7. Apply another bevel of -1.25mm shift and -1.25mm inset.
  8. Apply another bevel of 1.25mm shift and -1.25mm inset.
  9. Change the surface name to Glass.
  10. Deselect all polygons.
  11. You're now ready to apply appropriate surface attributes to the beams and glass.

Presto! One geodesic dome!

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Posted on February 25, 2006 08:00 by Dave
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Categories: Lightwave Tutorials
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Comments

January 8. 2009 00:56

Paul Boland

Hi.

Thanks for this.  I have two questions.

1.  What if I don't want the glass panels but just the sheleton structure, how would I do that?

2.  Will this work for non-spherical objects?

Paul.

Paul Boland

January 8. 2009 01:03

Dave

1) At step nine, you've still got the "glass" polygons selected. Instead of changing the surface name, just delete them.

2) The technique ought to work just fine with any object shape. However, you'll need to adjust the bevel amounts based on the scale of the object you're working with.

Dave

January 8. 2009 01:21

Paul Boland

Thanks, Dave.

Paul Boland

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