DomeSketch vs Simply Differently — Geodesic Dome Notes
Rene K. Mueller's 2005–2019 notes: every icosahedral, octahedral and cubic variant with chord factors to five places, bending angles, face angles, construction maps, and an inline calculator per variant that also optimises lath cuts.
Where Simply Differently — Geodesic Dome Notes leads
- Bending angle per strut and the three angles of every face, which DomeSketch does not show.
- Lath cut optimisation: which pairs of struts to cut from one length, and how many laths — nothing in DomeSketch does this.
- Octahedral and cubic domes, zomes, star domes and bow domes, with photographs of models.
Where DomeSketch does something it doesn't
- A page of notes with calculators embedded in it; there is no model to turn and no design to save.
- Nothing about the building — openings, cover, materials, site.
Pick Simply Differently — Geodesic Dome Notes if
- You want to understand the geometry, or cut laths with the least waste.
Pick DomeSketch if
- You want a design, not a lesson — though read the notes anyway.
The run — 20 ft · 3V · 5/8 sphere, 2026-09-20
Entered: 3V 5/9 Icosahedron Dome Calculator, d = 20, Tab.
- A 3.4862 × 30, B 4.0355 × 55, C 4.1241 × 80; h 11.8759; chord factors 0.34862 / 0.40355 / 0.41241; 83 laths to cut
- DomeSketch: the same chord factors to five places; A 3.486, B 4.035, C 4.124
Height 11.876 vs DomeSketch's 11.770: the notes measure to the top vertex from the lowest base vertex; DomeSketch measures from the mean base plane.
About our side of this page
DomeSketch is our product; this page is written by us. Its numbers for the run are computed from the geometry when the page is built and are the same as the reference table. What DomeSketch does not do:
- Class I icosahedral only, 1V–8V: no octahedral, no Class II or III, no Kruschke or Mexican subdivisions (Acidome, Simply Differently).
- No bevel, dihedral or mitre angles and no timber cut lengths net of a joint (Geo-Dome, Acidome).
- No reverse calculation from a strut length (Domerama, Desert Domes); no lath cut optimisation (Simply Differently).
- Feet and inches only in the interface; millimetres only in the STL export.
- Prices and mix yields are placeholders and the page says so; the materials estimate is rough.
- No hub cut deductions for any specific connector (Sonostar).
Sources
- https://simplydifferently.org/Geodesic_Dome_Notes?page=3 · checked 2026-09-20 · run by hand in a headless browser; screenshot on this page
Runs made 2026-09-20 · prices verified 2026-09-20 · a person did every check; nothing here was scraped. Entries older than 90 days say so rather than disappearing.
Every page here says when it was last checked; a stale entry keeps its date rather than being quietly changed. A corrections address will go here once there is one.