A truncated cuboctahedron is an Archimedean solid, meaning it is a highly symmetrical, convex polyhedron with identical vertices and faces of regular polygons. As its name suggests, you can create the truncated cuboctahedron by truncating (cutting off) the vertices of a cuboctahedron. A cuboctahedron is a rectified cube. After you model it, you can divide all its edges into 1/3s. Then, connect those division points to draw the squares, hexagons, and octagons. In this short tutorial video, I am folding a truncated cuboctahedron. This means I am building the model from its unrolled net. This is tricky because you need to construct the inner angle of the solid. Let’s watch the video and see how I did that.

In this video series, I demonstrate in-class exercises from the Architectural Geometry course I teach to first-year students. Using Rhinoceros software, we explore Euclidean constructions, basic drawing, and transformation commands. In addition, I study introductory fractals, regular and semi-regular tessellations, patterns, modeling, and unrolling polyhedra. These short drawing exercises are beneficial for junior architects, interior designers, industrial designers, and others interested in related disciplines. I’ll be posting exercises weekly on my blog and other platforms. So, today’s exercise is folding a truncated cuboctahedron.

The software used in this course is Rhinoceros 3d (www.rhino3d.com). However, if you want to find out more and see the whole list of this video series, you can check my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/@designcodingnet and my blog at: www.designcoding.net/. You can also check my Instagram page at www.instagram.com/designcodingnet/. The music of this video is ‘Solace’ by Scott Buckley (CC-BY 4.0). www.scottbuckley.com.au