Patterned Dodecahedron Ball

Just playing around with patterns in OpenSCAD. I might yet develop the idea into something more print-worthy, add hinges to the segments or something like that, but my interest was more in seeing if it was possible to protect this pattern onto a curved surface and have it tile. Which, it does, pretty well, although it's a liner projection onto a curved surface which causes the lines to narrow toward the edges of each tile. (feel free to improve on this if you fancy the challenge)

To make things more interesting each time you preview, the orientation of each tile is randomly assigned and mirrored or not. So it's extreeeeeemely unlikely any two previews are ever the same. Pattern Permutations: number_of_faces ^ number_of_sides_each_face_has ^ mirrored_versions_of_pattern (12^5=248,832)^2 = 61,917,364,224 possible pattern permutations. That said, I'm sure the number would come down experimentally if one were to exclude all duplicates that could be achieved by rotating the entire sphere. If anyone knows the formula for that, I'd be interested to know what it is.

Files: Patterned_Dodechahedron_Ball_00_libraries_included.scad contains the library files that it needs to work on its own.

Patterned_Dodechahedron_Ball_00.scad uses but does not contain the two library files below, so you'll need to keep all three files in the same folder or put the other two files in the OpenScad Libraries folder.

Arc_Module_2.scad Triangle_Calculator_Function.scad

Category: Other