Dodecagon About

Dodecagon

In geometry, a dodecagon, or 12-gon, is any twelve-sided polygon.

A regular dodecagon is a figure with sides of the same length and internal angles of the same size. It has twelve lines of reflective symmetry and rotational symmetry of order 12. A regular dodecagon is represented by the Schläfli symbol and can be constructed as a truncated hexagon, t, or a twice-truncated triangle, tt. The internal angle at each vertex of a regular dodecagon is 150°.

Source: Wikipedia

Sweet Home 3D

I've been playing with

Sweet Home 3Dfor over 15 years now. During that time Sweet Home 3D has grown from a simple little program for interior decoration to a full house design software package. Many available plugins extend its already extensive set of features. All open-source! It is used by millions of users around the world and often by professionals to create visuals for their business like realtors and the French police (to create crime and accident scenes).

Some users create the most detailed realistic furniture, others create beautifully detailed homes. Some are experts with using lights and rendering photo's or recreating homes from existing buildings. There are users that create complete scenes with terrains, boats, and lakes.

Me? Where some people are into gaming or collecting post stamps my 'game' is Sweet Home 3D. I do this solely for my own enjoyment. Not for others, not for money, just for me. And since Sweet Home 3D is open source I follow along that path and with this site I share a little knowledge and things I created so maybe others can have some fun with it too.

Why Dodecagon?

It kind of happened by accident. A few years ago I was fiddling around with octagon shaped rooms for houses because I like to do things different to keep them interesting. In many cases the 8 sides of the octagon were limiting too much and I needed more sides. I found out everything was much easier and looked much better with 12 sides. I also realized that I could replace a lot with a 12-sided shape or part of it. Along the way it got a little out of hand and more and more of my large projects were redesigned using the dodecagon shape.

A dodecagon shape in Sweet Home 3D is very efficient: 12 sides and you can split 12 by 2, 3, 4, and 6. The perfect shape to use as a whole or in parts. The 150° angle between sides is also perfect since it's one the 15° steps that Sweet Home 3D uses with magnetism on. In the last year or so the shape offered another big advantage: the object size is a lot smaller than the same shape rounded. The difference between a round cylinder and a 12-sided cylinder is significant, especially if you use a lot of them in a project. Do the same with a sphere and the difference in object size is huge. And if I really want a pipe or something similar to look round I use Blender to smooth the surface and you can't see the difference while still having a much smaller sized object.

So, that's why Dodecagon. I like the way the shape looks and with the ever growing projects the smaller object sizes really help too.

3D Models

I create ALL furniture for my projects myself. And when I say "ALL" I mean everything that is not a basic native object in Sweet Home 3D, like walls and floors. Just a few textures are used. All furniture, doors, windows, staircases, etc. are custom created. There are no third party models here.

Half the fun of Sweet Home 3D is creating the furniture I use in my projects. I spend more time on designing and creating furniture than on the buildings. All models are created using Sweet Home 3D and Blender, in most cases using several steps between the two using export and import. I like Sweet Home 3D better and it's much easier but there are some 3D object manipulations Sweet Home 3D can't do.

On dodecagon.nl you can find many 3D models I created for use in Sweet Home 3D. All 3D models are placed in the public domain so free to download and use without attribution.

Most models are created for use in very large projects so great consideration is taken to keep the model sizes as small as possible. This is to keep photo rendering or a virtual visit reasonably possible with large projects. Sometimes that means that small details are omitted because you wouldn't see them anyway considering the size of the projects. That also means there are very few round curves, these are expensive in size and with rendering. For some models a second, more detailed, version is available for close up view. In all cases I tried to find a good balance between size and detail. Don't expect photo-realistic models here because they simply are too large for my projects. On the other hand, if it can logically open it will probably open! Where reasonably useful all models have deformations defined to move parts. For example with the Office Chair you can adjust the seating, the armrests, and the headrest up and down.

All 3D models are available in Sweet Home 3D Furniture Libraries. Furniture Libraries are a convenient way of organizing models, for example to keep models for a specific subject together. They also make downloading and importing in Sweet Home 3D easier. The most important reason for using Furniture Libraries is that you can add extra properties to the models that are not available in the native obj/mtl model format. Things like displaying sashes, setting a wall distance so doors and windows can have a border or window sill outside the wall, make lights act as actual lights in photo rendering, and predefining shelf elevations. These features only work if you use a Furniture Library.

Projects

I have over a hundred projects in some stage of progress. Most of these are furniture or parts for larger projects. Many projects are for a specific set of furniture like the Dodecagon Kitchen or special models like the Dodecagon Greenhouses.

A project will be published as soon as it is at a stage where it's worth to look at. In fact no project is ever 100% finished because I always tinker with this or that in projects to make them better.

One of the largest projects is the Sports&Recreation complex. A huge complex consisting of 12 big dodecagon shapes in a dodecagon pattern. Each one is or will be a sport or recreation venue in its own. So far only #9 The Dodecagon Olympic Swimming Pool and Dodecagon Shopping Mall are close to being published but like all other projects they are still works in progress.

Projects that are still in development: several appartment buildings, a college/university campus, a large hospital, a retirement home, office buildings, factory buildings, and more.

Another big project that will take a long time before it can be published is the terrain for all the buildings. This will be a single very large terrain where all the buildings and other infrastructure will be consolidated into a small country. That is not within the capabilities of Sweet Home 3D and I'm still researching the best way to create this for viewing in a html page.

Documents

There is a separate section of the site that offers Tips&Tricks, How-To's, and Manuals. Most are for new users and created because of recurring questions on the forum. Long-time users should already know most of it. More will be added when they are complete because half a manual is no manual, I have several in development. All of these are available as PDF download and some have an extra zip file available with an example project and/or model files.

The website

I'm definitely not a website developer, although this is not the first site I created.

One thing I tried for fun is to create this site without using any Javascript. So far I succeeded, this site does not require Javascript to be enabled. Zip, none, nix, nada. No javascript here. Have fun browsing the site.