How to model a Dodecahedron from scratch

Last crawled date: 1 year, 10 months ago

Using a surface part to form an assembly that is turned into a solid object - no sweat or mathematics required. Download all the step-by-step screendumps if you want to follow the build on screen.

1) Draw a sketch of a pentagon (Step1.jpg)
2) Create a planar surface body from the sketch (Step2.jpg)
3) Save as a part file (Step3.jpg)
4) Use the function "Create Assembly From Part" (Step4.jpg)
5) Click the green check mark to insert and fix the pentagon in the assembly (Step5.jpg)
6) Control-drag a copy of the pentagon into the assembly from the feature tree (Step6.jpg)
7) Orient it so that two edges are close to each other (Step7.jpg)
8) Mate the two edges with a coincident relation (Quickest way is to control-select both and choose the mate-icon from the pop-up menu) (Step8.jpg and Step9.jpg)
9) Control-drag another copy of the pentagon into the assembly (Step10.jpg)
10) Mate it to one edge on the fixed pentagon and one edge on the movable pentagon. This fully defines the model (Step11.jpg and Step12.jpg)
11) Control-drag the next three pentagons into the assembly and constrain their edges with coincident mates (Step13.jpg and Step14.jpg and Step15.jpg)
12) Inserting the last piece will probably over-define the assembly. This warning is not critical, but you can make it disappear by deleting a mate, if you wish.
13) Highlight and right-click all the parts in the feature tree and select the function: "Form New Subassembly Here". This allows us to save time and sweat by reusing existing geometry (Step16.jpg)
14) Control-drag a copy of the new subassembly into the assembly (Step17.jpg)
15) Orient it so that it matches the fixed part (Step18.jpg)
16) Mate three sets of corner points to each other to fully define the model. You have now created an assembly with a surface model of a dodecahedron (Step19.jpg)
17) Save the assembly as a PART file with the option "Exterior Faces" selected. You don't need to save the assembly itself as it's just an intermediate model (Step20.jpg)
18) Open the part file you just saved (Step21.jpg and Step22.jpg)
19) Use "Knit Surface" with the "Try to form solid" option selected while selecting all 12 surfaces from the Surface folder in the feature tree, to turn this surface model into a solid model (Step23.jpg)
20) Select all external surfaces and apply a Fillet of 1 mm (Step24.jpg and Step 25.jpg)
21) You have created the solid dodecahedron without sweat or mathematics ;-)