Catalan Lamps

Catalan Solids are the duals of Archimedean Solids. They were first described by mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan in the 19th century. There are 13 Catalan solids, and they exhibit interesting symmetries and unique characteristics. While coding the vertex coordinates of these solids in Grasshopper, I made a simple lamp design to exercise the programming language. The code generates the 13 Catalan Lamps with flaps. Since the polyhedra have planar faces, they can be cut out by hand or a laser cutter. After cutting every face from a translucent material such as PVC, you can connect them from the flaps either by glue, rivets, or staples. You can connect any polyhedra to the Grasshopper definition.

This Grasshopper definition generates lamp designs based on the input parameters. The type and radius of the base solid, and the size of the flaps are the input parameters. It is possible to connect any polyhedra to explore different designs. The output of the definition is the 3d model of the design, and it is easy to unroll the faces with the flaps as closed polylines. Therefore, it is ready for manual cutting or laser cutting. The code is using native Grasshopper components. Thus, no add-ons are necessary for it to work.