3D Drawing; and a Geometry Puzzle
Google just bought my favorite 3D drawing program, SketchUp, and made it available for free to everyone. This is the easiest and most intuitive way to create 3D models, with the possible exception of Second Life. It comes with a tutorial that will have you making models in no time. I used this program to create this illustration of a space station which I use as a visual aid to explain Lojban sentence structures.
Recently I made a model of a three-dimensional chess variant I invented years ago, named Hannibal. Click the pictures to see larger versions. Here it is perpendicular to the ground. Before I add the playing pieces, I want to tilt the board until it rests all three of its deepest points on the table.
I rotated it 45 degrees along one non-vertical axis and 45 degrees along the other non-vertical axis. As you can see, this still isn't level. Here's a geometry question: from the starting position shown above, how many degrees do I have to rotate it around each axis to rest all three points on the ground?
Comments
11011110 on May. 7, 2006 9:22 PM
Here's a geometry question: from the starting position shown above, how many degrees do I have to rotate it around each axis to rest all three points on the ground?
tan-1 sqrt(2).
Here by way of a google blog search for geometry, btw. Thanks for the heads up on SketchUp; I can't use it yet because I'm on a Mac not a PC, but they say a Mac version is "coming soon" so I'll check back on that later.
11011110 on May. 7, 2006 9:24 PM
tan-1 sqrt(2).
That's around an axis through the two points already on the ground, btw.
matt-arnold on May. 7, 2006 10:06 PM
Thank you for your comment.
dawnwolf on May. 8, 2006 12:17 PM — Request
This is great! And, the size of the graphic has messed up an entire page of LJ entries for me. Behind a cut, please?
matt-arnold on May. 8, 2006 1:18 PM — Re: Request
On the one hand I want to be considerate to the monitor-challenged. On the other hand it's important to me to display these on the front page of nemorathwald.com. I may have found a solution with the way that I just edited the entry. Let me know if it still messes up the width of your friends page.
dawnwolf on May. 8, 2006 3:41 PM — Re: Request
It's *much* better. Thank you!
Leave a Comment