flat surfaces on a sphere

[MackDiesel]

Having problems placing 2X2 squares on a spherical object and making them normal to surface..can anyone help...Thanks

 

[burhop]

How many, and do you have a pattern?

 

[MackDiesel]

I have an 18 inch radius and trying to fit as many as I can on a 1/4 sphere...90 degrees.... a set of 2x2 light PCB Boards..

 

[burhop]

The general tiling of a sphere is very hard and I don't know there is a perfect solution to what you want.

A general solution might to pick one of the spherical polyhedrons (e.g a soccer ball with pentagons) and work from there.

As for getting at least one normal, you can create a sphere (or part of one) create a plane tangent to its surface, and sketch a square on that. After that, it probably depends on the pattern you want to create. Maybe someone else has some ideas?

BTW, you might Google "Tiling a sphere" There is lots of discussion out there on this. Or look here for some images:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_polyhedron

Mark

 

[MackDiesel]

Thanks..... I am investigating the use of the wrap sketch function...