Hi Roger,

Looked in "How Buildings Learn" (what a great book) and there it is on page 59. The picture has the following label: "Though it was competently built by Bill Woods of Dyna Domes, Phoenix, soundness and shear flash were not enough to keep so unwieldy a space occupied."

Brand, in the text on the same page writes...

"As for domes, fancied by architects through the ages, the findings are now in, based on an entire generation's experience with Buckminster Fuller geodesic domes of the 1970s. They were much touted in the architecture magazines of the period. As a major propagandist for Fuller domes in my Whole Earth Catalogs, I can report with mixed chagrin and glee that they were a massive, total failure."

He goes on to elaborate the failures in detail. Ouch.

Luckily, I'm not planning on building a dome, just a curved roof. I plan to start with a gazebo and see how that goes before even thinking about anything larger. I have to say though, that Bill Wood's steel hub system approach increases my confidence that house-sized curved roofs are feasible both structurally and economically.

It's funny how the materials you are familiar with constrain your thinking. I've never worked with steel (other than nuts, bolts, screws) so it never occurred to me to try an approach where just tabs would hold the spoke to the hub. Anyone have recommendations regarding finding/creating the steel parts shown in Roger's sketchup model?

Fred

Remus, Chris and Bob,

Thanks for the help. I'll give Didier's align tool a try.

Fred

Roger,

Thanks for making the model.

@unknownuser said:

on the way back I said to my wife, "do you want to see an interesting chapter from my past." She said "no," so I said "we are going anyhow."

Ahhh, the simple joys of married life.

Looks like an interesting elegant strong solution. Did he just hammer the tabs flush with the inside of the ring? Why do you suppose it didn't catch on as a system for dome frames?

Fred

I helped out in a second grade class this week in which the kids were using SketchUp. They were all plugging along nicely with one exception, which was placing components downloaded from the warehouse. As I tried to help them I found myself reaching for the mouse (a teaching no-no) because it was just too difficult to explain how to move and rotate components into the positions they wanted them. Afterwards, as I thought about this, it occurred to me that a command that would allow you to select two faces and then have the component containing the second face automatically moved so the selected face on the component would be placed flush with the first selected face, would be a really helpful addition to SketchUp... and not just for elementary school kids. Maybe a ruby exists for this but I think it would be useful to enough people that it should be built into SketchUp.

Sure looks like it. How many spherical houses can there be in Arizona?

Roger,

No wedding vows exchanged re the type of connector. I'm looking for solutions that work and are implementable easily and inexpensively. Please share the simpler solution!

Thanks,

Fred

PS Is the dome house still around?

Thanks for the comments. Like the "flying splashes of tempura paint..." description. I think what I'm enjoying about these is taking the hard-edged SketchUp export image and transforming it into something a little softer and less identifiable.

I'm enjoying playing with this approach. Not sure where it's going but I think the images are interesting. First the native export then a couple of Photoshop mods.

Hi Dale,

It would be really helpful to be able to select multiple proxy shapes and set SDS working on them automatically in sequence. Running SDS on a complex shape at levels 3 or 4 can take quite a while and you can't use SU while that's happening, but if you are doing multiple proxies you need to hang around and wait for each one to finish before starting on the next. Ideally, I'd like to be able to select X number of proxies and leave the computer chugging away at them.

Thanks for the current SDS and versions to come.

Fred

Playing around with SDS, FreeScale and follow-me. A little post-processing in Photoshop. Never tried this much post-processing before on abstracts. Curious what people think?

The SU model is below.

Eric, Thanks for the explanation. Fred

Eric,

Nice model and images. Crisp and compelling.

In the 1st and 2nd images how do you get the back of the paperclip to be out of focus? This isn't something you can do in Podium is it?

Fred

Just want to let all the photographers know how much I've been enjoying your images. nomeradona, your pictures are luminous ... full of wonderful light. You are a master. I have a new appreciation of Vietnam because of them!

I was playing around last night with some ideas for a new project and made this. I'll admit I have a warped sense of design but I still like it.

I just want to make sure that my offer in the previous post was clear. That offer being that I would be happy to pay someone a mutually agreeable fee to produce a bunch of hexagon blanks out of plywood. The image below shows the jigs that I believe would be needed to facilitate the cutting of the hexagons on a table saw. The attached SketchUp file contains these as well. If only it were as easy to make these with real wood as it is with SketchUp.

Thanks for considering.

Fred

jigs.skp

Some of you may have seen the posts I've made over in the Corner Bar about creating a hexagonal shaped hub part.

301 Moved Permanently

(www.sketchucation.com)

As other options proved to be too expensive I decided to try making this part out of wood. (See images below.) Given the tools I have access to, and my lack of woodworking skills, I'm reasonably pleased with the results and want to continue experimenting. To do that I need more hexagonal hubs, and hubs cut more accurately than the ones I've made so far. I'm pretty sure that someone with a good table saw, and a couple of easily made jigs, could turn out the hubs fairly quickly. If anyone is interested please get in touch and perhaps we can reach a mutually agreeable arrangement for producing a bunch of these.

Thanks,

Fred

@ecuadorian said:

I have no idea how you did this.

A couple of the steps are shown in the images below. After these steps it is just a lot of subdivide and smooth work, and making and applying textures. Pretty straight forward.

Just to bring the ongoing saga up to date.

I made six more of the hexagonal hubs out of plywood. (As an aside, let me state that it is a lot easier to build things in the virtual world of SketchUp than the real world of saws, drills and wood... and I have the bandaids to prove it.) The jig I built to assist with creating the hubs helped but I'm not able to cut the hexagons to the tolerances really needed to make the jig work well.

Anyway, I put everything together yesterday, glued it up and tightened up the bolts. I am quite pleased with the results. I now have a prototype of a structurally solid wooden TIN. I can stand (all 200+ pounds of me) on the center hub and the TIN barely flexes. Next step is to cut triangles for the faces out of 1/2" plywood.

The Steinway piano company is just completing the installation of the world's largest solar cooling system using absorption coolers.

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/green-building-news/piano-factory-installs-solar-air-conditioning-system