Place holes evenly around a sphere

[CadManDoo]

Does anyone know any easier way to place holes evenly around a hollow sphere other than the increasingly complicated way I've been trying to do it?

Gro-Ball.dwg

[CadManDoo]

basically a wiffle ball shape.

[MSasu]

This previous discussion was about randomly placing points on a sphere – maybe you can modify one of the routines to fit your case.

[Dadgad]

Have you tried a 3D POLAR ARRAY?

[CadManDoo]

Have you tried a 3D POLAR ARRAY?

No. I'm not familiar with that tool. but I will look it up. Thanks

[CadManDoo]

I was able to array cylinders in a circle on the xy plane only, not sure how to get them to array in a spherical pattern. I'm using Autocad 2009 by the way.

[Dadgad]

Here you can see the basic steps I used with the 3A (3DARRAY) command.
I started with a circle upon which I used PRESSPULL to pull it out to a cylindrical solid.
I used the 3D ARRAY feature to create a POLAR array to fill 180 degrees, choosing the center of the larger circle as the ROTATION POINT.
The large circle was concentric with the center point of the cylinder which will later be used to SUBTRACT the holes from the sphere which will be added later.
Once you have done one array of those drill bits, you can do another polar array of them about the z axis to fill 180 degrees with an appropriate number.
You can add a 3D solid SPHERE from your modeling toolbar or palette on the ribbon, make sure that the sphere is also centered on the center point
of your large circle.
Then you just use the SUBTRACT command to delete the drill bit like cylinders, and you should have nicely spaced holes.
If you need the inside surface spherical too, then you can add a smaller sphere inside of it and SUBTRACT it from the larger wiffle ball.

[SEANT]

In addition to even rotation, the even spacing of geodesics (fairly even, anyway) may be of interest. Look at this thread for some information regarding that format.

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?68672-geodesic-dome



The attached is an example prepped to add holes geodesically.

[Dadgad]

In addition to even rotation, the even spacing of geodesics (fairly even, anyway) may be of interest. Look at this thread for some information regarding that format.

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?68672-geodesic-dome

The attached is an example prepped to add holes geodesically.

That is a great tool SEANT, and I am wondering how I missed that spectacular thread, thanks for the heads-up.
M.C. Escher is wishing he could have been here for that thread, and all this amazing technology.

Marko Ribar rules!