Cineversity

Hello Sassi, I am trying to figure out how to divide each face of the icosahedron as shown in the attached screenshot. Forgive me if this is so obvious but I have explored the Mesh commands but cannot find a way to divide in this way so that a point is created perfectly in the center with the three edges.

Thanks in advance,
David

Hi David,

There are several ways to do that, but not a single click solution is available to my knowledge.

Just use the Extrude Inner function and then the Weld Tool, to merge the three points. Since that needs to be done for each “face”, it might not be the one.
Similar to that is the Extrude Inner, while pushing it very close to get the new points to come close together, then use the Optimize Function with a larger threshold.
This is also doable with the Bevel Function in combination with the Optimize.

I think you can see the process here, it is always a two step process, produce new points and merge them.

To do that precisely, I would just type in what you have given in data already with the object. Have a look here; One minute clip:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/uIypZEn9Uv2HdxavORwOQIGpGUEbh2LTRx0y22gupO5

The idea is based on a equal sided triangle here. This means that we can half it, to gain a triangle with a 90º corner in it, and we have one part of a tangence, which leads to a simple “half the length” and half the angle fo this triangle (which is 60º, so 30º). In short half of the side times the tan of 30º. Now the optimize can work with default settings.

Enjoy

I truly admire your fusion of engineering, art and software. Of course I should have thought of the extrude inner! I am embarrassed as you have shown this before. I need to work on my non-lateral thinking mind.

Your video took me back (quite a few years to say the least) to my school days when trigonometry was taught, but I did not pursue a career that leveraged this, so like may things in this hectic world, it gets forgotten.

Beautiful, simply beautiful. Thanks Sassi.

You’re very welcome, David, thanks a lot for taking the time.

I know, many people avoid math. The main reason I love it: it makes me independent and let me see structures and relationships. In other words, solutions. In modeling, as well in 3D we do not need a lot of this, but those few “human plug-ins” are invaluable.

There is even a book available “Mathematics for Computer Graphics”, which should be in everyones desk-drawer, hehe.

Anyway, thanks for asking and for your nice feedback, very much appreciated.

ENJOY.