Creating platonic solids specifically a tetrahedron

[Anonymous]

So I was trying to create a small tetrahedron shaped object and then I wanted to extrude cut a few designs on each face.

I attempted to do this with an elaborate series of planes based off of initial sketch planes where I sketched equal triangles and extruded them and then used planes to cut off the excesses.

I eventually created a perfect tetrahedron however when I tried to work on each face fusion refused to allow me to do so.

I really wish fusion just added some basic platonic solids shapes we could work with but I do not see how to do this.

Any ideas on how to accomplish this in Fusion? I may have to learn Blender instead to accomplish. Pity.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

This is a really interesting question.  It looks like a good way to go about making various polyhedra is to first extrude your unique side shapes, each as a component, then make as many copies of those components as needed, for your case need a total of four triangular faces.  Then define revolute joints between them so they all assemble into the correct geometry.  Before creating the joints, select, right click on and Ground the component that will be the central face (if forget to do that, can always go back in time in timeline or move the event back in time).  Then for the joints you want to define the revolute joint origin along a face edge, specifically at the centerpoint, as seen here:

Once all the faces are joined together, some will require an additional joint to get everything to close up.  It's good to edit the existing joints to rotate them towards their final positions, so that with the closing joints the algorithm gets an idea what your trying to do (otherwise will usually say the closing joints will conflict with existing joints). 

And viola, with the closing joints in place, it has all closed up.

I awesome polyhedra that could quickly be made with this method are likely limitless, and I look forward to seeing some!  And let me know if you run into any issues we need to look at.

Jesse

[Anonymous]

Here's my smiley face stellated truncated octahedron 😉

 I first made a subunit of one square face and two heaogon faces, and placed these three components into a new component, so it could be duplicated at will.

Then I was able to go back in time to add a solid loft (with one profile being a point) to the master component (had to add it to both sides since didn't pay attention which side was in or out during assembly...also had to offset outer edge inwards a little so did not disrupt the edge that joints were referencing).  Did a similar process for adding the smiley face. 

Here's the .f3d, it's a fun object to create and rotate.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3hl1g1DsQouek9OTkhDSGlPTUE/view?usp=sharing

Jesse

[Anonymous]

I didn't really give much detail, so let me know if you have any questions with the approach I used.

Jesse

[Anonymous]

Thank you for those excellent ideas which I had not considered. I guess I was fixated on having smooth edges and so I did not consider joints such as above. I am still new to fusion but this gives me a great roadmap of what I can do to move forward.

[San_Escobar]

Please don't get me wrong, but why design such thing. Practice? Maybe Google fail me but so far I still have no Idea what it is intended for. 

[Anonymous]

I was just going to make a few different platonic solid shaped dice. Like an octahedron, nothing elaborate.

[Anonymous]

Oh that's a very cool idea!  Could 3D print it, or machining wood or aluminum polyhedra dice would be sweet too.

Jesse

[Anonymous]

I need to make a lo-poly style reception desk. The Platonic solids workflow, sketch simple shapes and assemble using joints isn't working for me. I have a series of spinal shapes and want to loft from one to the next but the loft command creates sweeping curves from shape to shape. How can I loft a from polygon to polygon using polygonal node points?

[Anonymous]

Hi Dale, I'm afraid I don't understand your question from the information provided 😕  Regarding making the platonic solids / polyhedra, one thing I found is after applying a revolute joint, bring the two joined panels close to desired end position before applying the next revolute joint.  As to the loft you are trying to do, I'm not at all clear one the problem you are having.  Maybe you could provide some screenshots?

Jesse