For people who aren’t very good at math, like myself, calculating the volume of a monolithic dome could be a very time-consuming task or even an impossible task. Especially if the dome is an irregular ellipsoid of some type with various organic cutouts.
For something as simple as a sphere, that’s totally doable though. Although, I admit, it took me a good 20 minutes to do my calculations in the initial post. I’m just so used to the computer doing the math for me, so I haven’t had the need. The part that was most difficult for me was converting the cubic inches to cubic feet. After relearning it, I get it now & could calculate a sphere’s volume quickly, but accurate volume calculations in SketchUp could’ve helped speed up the initial volume calculation process… and it would still speed up complex volume calculations (like the monolithic dome’s volume).
On a side note: I’ve just developed an interest in math because math can increase the organization in my designs. Mathematical surfaces are so beautiful, so I think they’d be great design elements.
