Is a Geodesic Dome feasible?

[Anonymous]

Hello, I was planning on doing a geodesic dome-home design in one of my architecture classes and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to go about it. I have the dimensions of the house and the sizes of each triangular "panel" of the house; however, I'm not sure of how to construct it within revit. Would it even be worth the effort? Or is there another way, possibly through Autocad, if order to construct a geodesic dome easier?

[Anonymous]

It is possible in Revit, using a Conceptual Mass, thena Divided Surface, and a Pattern Based Curtain Panel applied

to the Divided Surface.

Do a search on these topics.

cheers

[loboarch]

Cliff got to the question be fore I did, but the conceptual massing tools will probably be able to get waht you are after.  Here is an example I created in about 5 minutes.  It is not exactly a geodesic dome in the fact all the panels are different sizes.  with a bit more math applied and some more time taken I think it could get there.

[Anonymous]

Also take a look here:

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Vasari/enu/Community/Tutorials/Vasari_Talk_-_Design_and_Analysis_Webina...

Zak shows how to use reporting parameters to check if the panels are "flat" and to report lengths of each "leg"

of the panels. His demo is not on a pure dome shape, but a similar approach could be applied to the geodesic dome.

cheers

[Anonymous]

Which of your largest domes has tiny 2' triangles not combined into larger triangles? Can I buy the plans for it? I'm thinking dome inside dome home. I want at least a 5' walk around the center dome. I was thinking something like a 50' diameter dome inside a 60' diameter dome, Both with four foot riser walls or sunken in the ground 14' for basement water storage and a 4' first floor sunken down over the water storage basement. The first floors will be the main living areas and the second floors will be both living and growing areas. And I am back filling the North, East and West sides of the structure. I wanted to make each 2' triangle out of wood framing and in my garage out of 2" x 4"s to be bolted together which would make it like 4" x 4" struts. On the south facing it will need over hanging covers so only the sun will go into the building during the winter months mainly So I can use passive solar heating. It basically would be a giant Earthship home. But I plan to do this with 3 of these domes. The center one will be the main growing dome. All three will also have basements with giant pools in the for water storage. I plan to also have a living pool either indoors or outdoors. I will not have black water in this home. It will have Humanure Toilet Systems (http://humanurehandbook.com) which turns human waste and etc. into good compost. It will not only grow plants to eat but also fish in the bottom of the green house in tanks. It will have vertical gardens with the fish tanks underneath Like seen at this site, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng. I also plan on heating each dome when necessary with this type of heater, http://www.survivopedia.com/how-to-build-a-rocket-mass-heater/.

One other thing. The plans need to have a cupola lookout and ventilation on the top of each dome where the dirt will be about 3 to 4 foot thick over the domes. So it will need to be tall enough to matter.

This is my plans but I need the initial plans to build this dome and I was good at math when I was in electronics but I lost all that so I can not figure out how to build these domes with this small of triangles? My math stinks now is why I need plans to figure out all the angles and etc of each triangle so they match perfectly when assembled.

That is my dream that I want to fulfill before I pass on. I plan on salvaging and recycling most the building materials. Not stealing in case that was your thoughts. I'm a Jehovah God fearing man.

[dahousecat]

I've written a script to build a 2v and 3v geodesic dome using the Fusion 360 api.

I've been learning python and the API as I go along so I'm sure they could be made more efficient but they both do the job.

Here are the spheres I've made

2v geodesic dome3v geodesic dome

Both scripts are available on my github

[liam2317]

dahousecat it looks like your link is broken.  I would really love to see how you achieved this.  Thanks!

[Alisder.Brown]

Hey

I did this for my college project back in 2013.

You should be able to follow this playlist and get the result you are looking for. It will give the option of a fully parametric geodesic dome and ability to swap out glazed, framed panels etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yuLKtj-ELc 

This is part one, i think there about 6-7 videos

Regards,

[dahousecat]

Sure, my plugin is available in this repo: https://gitlab.com/dahousecat/geodesic-py

[Silimun]

Hello,

I have installed your plugin but I run into an error whenever I try to run it. Do you know what could be causing this?

[dahousecat]

Sure, I'd just left a few calls to log to a debug file in there.

I've now removed them and deleted some unnecesary files from the repo.

Go ahead and download a fresh copy and it should work.

[Silimun]

Thank you for your response. I downloaded a fresh install of the add-on and reinstalled it but I am getting the same error message. I am not familiar with Python so I am at a bit of a loss. 

[dahousecat]

Arr yep, my mistake. I removed the calls to log, but not to clear log.

I've updated the repo again - hopefully this time it will work for you.

If not just let me know the error again and we'll work it out.

Hope this works for you!

Cheers,
Felix

[Silimun]

Thank you for the fix. The add-on works well now for an icosahedron and dodecahedron, but I get the following error for an octahedron, cube, and tetrahedron. Do you know what might be causing this?