Geodesic Dome Calculator5/11/2021
If you want to leave a cat door, leave off one of the lower AAA triangles.I originally made mine for my cat, but you can use the principles in this tutorial to scale this up or down to fit your needs.Supplies: Cardboard (not too thick) A few sheets of paper X-acto knife or box cutter Pencil Fine-tip ball-point pen Ruler Staplerstaples or brads I had about 2500 in (17.5 ft) and used most, but not all of it.Add Tip Ask Question Comment Download Step 1: Choose Dome Size There are two main decisions you need to make about your dome: (1) What level of dome complexity and (2) how big you want it.
The idea behind a geodesic dome is to take a perfect (half) sphere and tessellate, or give flat faces to it. There are many levels of tessellation, but for the sake of my sanity, I chose 2V (as defined by Desert Domes website), which has 40 faces. If you want to choose higher levels, be my guest, you can see the details in link. Now, you need to decide how big you want your dome to be. This will be entirely up to you, based on the amount of cardboard you have and what you intend to use your dome for. Here are some handy dome dimension calculators for a 2V dome, which has 10 AAA triangles and 30 ABB triangles: Calculate dimensions based on dome radius Calculate dimensions based on struttriangle size I recommend using the radius method (note that it is radius, not diameter) to get a rough triangle size, then use the triangle size calculator if you want to use rounder numbers. If you want to follow my example, I used 13 (shooting for a 26 diameter dome) to get a rough triangle size, then rounded the A length to 8, which gives a B length of 7 116 for a final radius of 12.9443. Add Tip Ask Question Comment Download Step 2: Create Triangle Templates A 2V dome has two types of triangles: AAA and ABB, where A and B represent different lengths. To cut these out of cardboard, you will need to create templates out of paper. If you want to make your own templates, here is how I recommend doing it: Near the bottom of a piece of paper, draw a line horizontally representing the base of the triangle, that is A long (in my case, 8) Find the middle of this line, and draw a perpendicular line vertically. ![]() Draw the third side, connecting the ends of the first two lines. I made mine 58. Make angled lines around each corner so that when you fold the flaps up they dont hit each other. You will need to trace around these templates, so I recommend using thick paper or cardstock. If you want to make templates the same size as mine, I have provided PDF files below for the AAA and ABB triangles. When you print them, be sure your printer options are set to Actual Size and not Scale to Fit Page. Geodesic Dome Calculator Pdf Download ABBAttachments AAA.pdf Download ABB.pdf Download Add Tip Ask Question Comment Download Step 3: Trace Triangles Use your templates to trace the necessary triangles onto your cardboard. Some things to note: Put the glossy side of the cardboard down, trace on the dull side. Alternate your triangles updown to save space I found the best way to trace the triangles was to: Firmly hold the paper down the whole time to avoid slipping Draw a dot at each corner (helps to realign triangle if it slips) Manually trace the angled corner sections with pencil Use the ruler to help trace the long edges (dull pencil helps) Use the ball-point pen or other sharp object to poke holes into the cardboard (through the dots in the template) along the fold edge Add Tip Ask Question Comment Download Step 4: Cut Out Triangles This is the most effective way I found to cut out the triangles: Dont use scissors, it will bend the cardboard too much. Use X-Acto knife or box cutter to scorecut the top layer of cardboard Lift the cardboard up and push the knife all the way through to cut the other layer(s) Add Tip Ask Question Comment Download Step 5: Fold Flaps Use a hard ruler to fold each flap up along the perforated line. Add Tip Ask Question Comment Download Step 6: Assemble the Dome Assemble the dome according the diagram, keeping the seams on the inside. I used staples, 3 in each edge, but it was difficult to get the staples through. I used a larger stapler for edges where I could fold the triangle down to get better access to the edge, and a smaller stapler (with less lip) to do the final edges where I couldnt fold the triangle down. I suspect you could use brads to similar effect, or come up with your own solution.
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