Create a Geodesic Dome in VRML 2.0

Description

Trapezium Development LLC ported Richard J. Bono's program Dome to Java in late 1998. Dome is a program that can be used to generate geodesic domes.

Trapezium's port consisted of a command-line version and a Java EAI-based VRML version. The EAI version is a bit unstable, and the command-line version is a little bit too difficult for Mac users to use (since Mac OS 8.x does not have a command-line), so I have implemented a basic graphical user interface to make the Java version of Dome a little easier to use. This Java version exports VRML 2.0 only. See the gallery for examples of models generated using JavaDome.

Warnings

This software has only been tested on Mac OS and Windows NT. Should the GUI fails to initialise on your platform, then you will can still use JavaDome as a command-line program (just like the original Dome but with VRML 97 output).

I have removed a couple of GUI elements that were in the first release of this software. Specifically, I have removed the buckyball option from the GUI because I have not been able to get buckballs to work properly and don't have time to find out what is wrong. However, this means that the software should now work properly for all options available from the GUI.

Installation

The Mac version have been packaged as double-clickable application.

Users of other platforms should include the file dome.jar in their CLASSPATHs and then run Java with rjbono.dome.RJBonoDome as the class argument. If no arguments are passed to Dome, then it will start up with it's GUI, otherwise it will operate as a command-line application (see the original Dome documentation provided in the distribution for details).

Download

• javadome.sit for the Mac OS (85k, StuffIt 5.x)
• javadome.zip for all other platforms (90k)

For the original, see Richard Bono's Geodesic Dome Page.

Online Version

The courageous amongst you can try the EAI version by clicking on the link below. Mac users need not bother trying this as it requires a newer version of Java than the one built into the Mac version of Netscape.

• EAI-based VRML Dome Generator

Go to the VRML on the Macintosh page.