When I started creating my own connectors for complex polyhedrals, I had no idea what I was doing. I used Wikipedia a lot for specific shapes I wanted to create, and many times iterated multiple designs before I got it right. This was before I found Stella4D. This programs is amazing, even if I weren’t using it to help me create my polyhedral connectors.
The basic need is to get the dihedral angle between faces to use in Fusion360 when created these shapes. But Stella provides the ability to enter edge length, and get precise measurements for the completed polyhedral. The library consists of hundreds of different shapes, from Archimedian to Johnson Solids, to near miss shapes to geodesic domes.
Stella even allows you to create unique, augmented versions of the polyhedrals. Currently, I am building an Augmented Truncated Icosahedron, and by using Stella4D, was able to get the connectors designed in Fusion 360 on the very first try. No iterations needed. This is a huge time saver for me and my workflow, and being able to create completely new shapes is so cool. I used to spend hours trying to figure out some of these connectors, and now it’s literally so fast, that I have a queue for my 3D printer waiting to print these out.
