The cellular canopy is an anonymous tutorial on the history recording capability of Rhino. I’ve been using a “pedagogical” version of this tutorial as an educational tool on the introduction to Grasshopper and Parametric Modeling for architects. The interesting thing with such exercises is they quickly attract students’ attention to the process of designing, in other words, “designing the design process”; is one of the first things we should emphasize […]

An octahedron is a polyhedron and platonic solid with 8 faces of identical equilateral triangles. In this post, I will try to explain the drawing and unrolling process of the octahedron. It has a close relationship with the cube as it’s dual. In order to construct an octahedron, we first have to create a square. The main problem of drawing the square is determining the right angle (perpendicular axis) to […]

Recording History in Rhinoceros3D has interesting potential. You might utilize it in the process of design exploration. We’ll try to show its concept and limitations; First, build two surfaces; one is planar at the world XY plane, and the other represents the “initial” form of your design. Put another surface on the planar one, as if it’s an ideal “component” of the finished geometric composition. Activate the “Record History” button […]

Icosidodecahedron is an Archimedian Solid, a thing in between the Platonic Solids of Icosahedron (d20) and Dodecahedron (d12). It is a rectified version of an Icosahedron, constructed by dividing every edge into two equal segments and joining these segments to create a composition of equilateral pentagons and triangles. Archimedian Solids consist of at least two equilateral polygons, whereas Platonic Solids are constructed by only one. We’ll deduce an Icosidodecahedron from […]

Today’s polyhedra is the beautiful icosahedron. It is one of the five Platonic Solids with twenty equilateral triangular faces. Its dual is the dodecahedron, which has pentagonal faces. Here, I explained the process of modeling an icosahedron. After creating a regular pentagon, you should find the “tip” point of the Icosahedron by intersecting spheres from at least three of the corner points with a radius of the pentagon’s edges. You […]

A truncated Tetrahedron is an Archimedian Solid, created by slicing a Tetrahedron. Its faces are regular hexagons and triangles. Assuming you’ve created a Tetrahedron, first join its faces to create a polysurface. Now, you may re-create the lines of Tetrahedron’s edges, either by drawing them or generating them (Curve/Curve from Objects/Duplicate Edge). While the edge lines are selected, hit (Curve/Point Object/Divide Curve By/Number of Segments) and type 3 to create the […]

The tetrahedron is a platonic solid with 4 equal triangular faces (which are also equilateral), 6 equal edges, and 4 vertices. While creating this shape, we will take a closer look at length transfers using compass-like tools both in two and three-dimensional space. In order to define the edge length of the first triangle (which is a straight line), start with any two points in cartesian space. Using a compass […]