Gkid asked if we could build a cardboard fort. She asked me that on the day I had run across this article in WSJ about why kids build forts and probably need them more than ever right now, so it was rather timely.
She’s VERY happy with it, and calls it “my awesome little cave.” It’s a pentagonal hexecontahedron (the post title is how it came out the first time she tried to say that mouthful!) built from cardboard and mailing tape and decorated with tigers (because that’s what she loves). @evansd2 helped me with figuring out how to make the bottom flat. I somehow managed to skew the pattern piece slightly at some point in the process, so the edges don’t line up as cleanly as I’d like, but she’s super happy with it, and that’s what counts!
Well, add one more to the list of accomplishments for the awesome grandma! Very cute! And, I loved seeing her pronunciation…I don’t think I could have done as well.
When I was in grade school, we had an assignment to design our future home. Being the strange child I was, I made a geodesic dome out of cardboard. Alas, no laser back then. I really wanted a much larger one, ideally big enough to put out in the backyard to house a telescope and place to sit.
I’m happy to see someone getting a fancy geometric dome large enough at least to nap in. Good work!
This is great ! Could you tell me how you found the optimum cut plane ?
I found an STL file of an pentagonal hexecontahedron and thought I could simply cut it in half in mesh-mixer before seperating it into single pieces. But this complex structure does not seem to have a simple equator or a dividing line that creates similar cut-of pieces. Maybe its just me, but I tried to have one flat surface or one point facing up and in neither case did I find a good cut line…
I bumped into the Japanese concept of the Menpo half mask and was thinking perhaps a Tiger design with a replaceable filter inside for when you do go out?
That was the part @evansd2 did, so he’ll have to tell you. There were three different shapes of partial pieces generated. I’m still struggling to fix the skew error(s) I had; when I get that done I’ll post it over in Free Files.
In a 3d program, you can just make the six combined pentagons and just drop a vertical to the horizontal “0” from each endpoint and connect the points at the other end and you have vertical walls that can be any length below the lowest point.
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in cardboard. Good luck with your brother’s tile! 
