MarsBase Agricultural Dome

[xenologer]

After previous success with dodecahedron shapes in LDD, decided to take the concept a bit further.

It's an agricultural dome for a space base.

Later it'd be filled with plants.

So, its still in progress.

At the moment the dome itself works pretty good, and I've located spots where it can mount onto a more normal brick structure (see the yellow studs at the bottom).

Problem is, what sorta structure to mount it on.

I'd rather not just place it direct onto a baseplate since thats awfully plain looking.

I'm thinking a large circular wall all around the base would be good.

Something like the domes in this screenshot. where theres a collar around the base of the dome for machinery and airlocks.

(from the space colony game 'Outpost')

Of course, building a circular wall like that is a challenge in itself.

Any suggestions?

Notes:

the dome by itself costs about 36$USD so far.

Decent price I say... I might just have to buy one later...

Edited June 24, 2008 by Sinner

[BerndDasBrot]

that look really nice! Has it been difficult to move all this hinges into the right position in LDD?

and btw: it's an half truncated icosahedron. (trust me on this I just had a test on (semi) Platonic solids...

[xenologer]

that look really nice! Has it been difficult to move all this hinges into the right position in LDD?

Sort of.

Thing is, all the angles are identical. So I can use the clone bricks tool to repeat it.

Hard part was getting the first angle right though.

Basically what I did was, adjust it to look approx right, clone it onto my hex and penta frames, then try to fit them together.

Then seeing that its either too wide or narrow an angle, hit the Undo button a buncha times, readjust it. then repeat the process of cloning and reattaching, and seeing how it fits....

Must have done that at least 10 times over till I found the angle that actually let everything fit together...

Since LDD doesnt let you type in an exact angle (have to mousedrag it by hand) precision was very hit and miss....

Anyhow, for the base of the dome, I'm thinking it Might be adequate to have an octagonal building.

I've been 'stressing the bricks' and found that I can get a 45 degree wall by using a triangle of 12 by 12 by

17 studs that fits close enough... (reality is 12 by 12 by 16.97 studs) but thats tolerable right?

[Batbrick]

Very nice, I'm looking forward to how this will turn out.

Batbrick Away!

[Asuka]

A marvelous project and a wonderful structure.

Your idea with the circular base sounds great, although I´m sure it would

look pretty cool with something more simply too, like perhaps a pentagon or even a triangle.

[Clonecommando007]

Looks great so far! You must be an expert in the LDD field!

[xenologer]

Thanks for the support.

Here's my current mock-up

Just to get a sense of scale, none of those walls are actually connected to the (floating) dome. and of course theres plenty of gaps to be filled in.

Not even sure I'm keeping the slopes yet...

Thats a 'stressed element' octagonal building.

and off to one side, you can see a moonbase standard ground level corridor. Might hook that up in one wall....

But I've never actually seen anyone do a ground level corridor, whats up with that?

[DJ Force]

In order to keep the Moonbase modular there have to bee certain "rules" about how to connect the modules. That´s why the corridors aren´t groundlevel, because some folks decided a raised platform looks cooler.

[xenologer]

Well, the ground level corridor Does show up in the moonbase standard instructions.

http://www.zemi.net/moonbase/images/moonbase_heights.jpg

I'm just puzzled as to why no one ever uses them as far as I've seen.

Is the ground so unpopular?

[steelharbingerofdeath]

more likely, most people build raised moonbases, the few that are ground level use the corridor connections as airlocks and corridors would get in the way of it.

are you going to do any more of the structures in the picture?

steel...

[Dark Sword Ragnarok]

This is pretty cool! I came across this on brickshelf, were you perhaps inspired by this?

[Adam]

That looks very cool! from me on the dome! How you got it all to attach correctly is beyond me; I find LDD difficult to work with at the best of times!