The icosahedron

In our first course, we built an icosahedron using the program Rhino. Since we were all working with the 3D software for the first time, most of us (including me) were completely overwhelmed. However, Professor Kretzer explained everything step by step, and by the end of the class, I had created a finished icosahedron. Then we unfolded it and added glue tabs to the surface net.

The ornaments

Ideation

First, I started sketching on a piece of paper. I quickly decided to create organic ornaments, as I wanted to create a contrast to the geometric basic shape. After some designs, I made it in Rhino and developed the final ornament.

The final net

After that, I inserted the ornament into all surfaces. With the 'Rotate' command, it went quite quickly, and all the ornaments were in the same position. Finally, I removed all the duplicate lines using the 'SelectDuplicate' command so that the laser cutter wouldn't cut in the same place multiple times.

Lasercutter

After that the file with the finished net was cut out of carton by a laser cutter. During the first attempt, I noticed that the glue tabs were too thick and overlapped with the ornaments, when you glue everything together. Therefore, I revised them again.

The final icosahedron

In the end, I had 3 nets cut out and glued together without any problems. Individually as well as in combination as a set of three, the icosahedron looks good. 

Although I had some difficulties with Rhino at the beginning, I am very satisfied with the result, and it turned out just as I had imagined.