Building polyhedra
from slab clay.

Start with independent polygon panels

Choose a solid and inspect its faces and joint settings in the designer. Solids includes all 13 Archimedean and five Platonic solids. Selected bases also support centered inward and outward pyramids, replacing a face with triangular panels.

The download contains one reusable copy of each unique panel type. A template marked MAKE 6 means six clay pieces from that pattern. Keep the template ID and edge labels when tracing. Templates are grouped by rotation, preserving bevel order and handedness; take care with chiral forms.

Construction names such as “excavated cube” and “outward-stellated dodecahedron” describe recipes. They do not imply a self-intersecting mathematical star polyhedron is a cuttable ceramic shell.

Set fired size and working-clay thickness

Finished base edge means the desired original solid edge after firing. New triangular edges are calculated individually and may have unequal lengths. Apex depth or height is measured from the original face plane to its centered apex, also in fired millimeters.

Slab thickness is the roller setpoint in working clay, before drying or firing. Enter a total linear shrinkage estimate measured for your clay and process. The working reference dimensions are the fired dimensions divided by 1 − shrinkage / 100. Thickness is already a working dimension and is not enlarged again.

Measure the wire angle from the slab surface

The interior dihedral is the angle inside the assembled shell between neighboring panels. A convex edge has an interior dihedral below 180°; a reflex, concave edge has one above 180°. A flat seam is 180°.

For a symmetric miter, the wire setting is min(δ, 360° − δ) / 2, where δ is the interior dihedral. A 90° setting is perpendicular to the slab, giving a square cut. A 0° setting is parallel to it. The setting is neither the full dihedral nor the angle from the normal.

Keep the reference edge, and follow the cut side

For the original convex panels, explicitly keep the exterior face down throughout cutting and beveling. The interior faces up. Cut the full outline, then remove upper waste with the beveler in that same position. The full exterior footprint underneath is the dimensional reference.

Concave constructions need a different blank. At a reflex edge the interior surface extends beyond the exterior reference, so Solids adds material to the raw outline. For an OUT bevel, turn the clay over with its exterior up and remove upper waste back to that reference. A panel with IN and OUT edges needs bevels from both sides; transfer its edge IDs before turning it.

In transformed templates, the solid perimeter is the raw blank, the dash-dot contour is the final exterior reference, and the dashed contour is the final interior surface. Printed edge dimensions refer to the exterior reference. Those internal contours guide the bevel geometry; trace the solid blank outline for the initial cut.

For a 6 mm slab, the 60° test setting gives a 3.4641 mm inset at a 120° convex joint and a 3.4641 mm outward extension at a 240° reflex joint. Download the test coupons from a construction recipe and dry-fit both in scrap. Check that exterior reference edges meet and the inner edges close before making a full set.

The workflow is suited to adjustable wire tools that remove upper waste, such as the Precision Beveler by KellyHoferStudios. Check your own tool against the stated angle convention.

Print at actual size and measure the marks

Export PDF for US Letter, A4 or A3, or download an individual SVG in physical units. Print at 100% / Actual Size with Fit to Page and borderless enlargement disabled. Measure the PDF’s 100 mm ruler and 1-inch square with a physical ruler before tracing.

Oversized panels tile with 10 mm overlap and registration crosses. Align matching crosses, join the complete outline and then trace it. The printed MAKE quantity stays inside the cutout. Transformed designs add assembly sheets mapping each joint to both panel instances and their template edge labels; parent IDs such as F001 remain in subface IDs such as F001.1.

Test the joint before committing to the shell

The calculated bevel is an ideal target. Moisture, roller variation, wire movement, compression, scoring, slip, joining and drying all change how a real panel behaves. Use your usual clay-joining practice and test representative joints at the working thickness.

Recessed and outward-pyramid fabrication plans are experimental. The app checks surface winding, closed manifold connectivity, degenerate faces and intersections. Transformed plans also check the finite-thickness mitered panel solids. Overlaps are marked on printable templates, with shared corner labels and an instance reference to help you review and relieve those areas by hand. Some high-valence corners, including cuboctahedron and rhombicuboctahedron corners, require additional corner relief that the app does not design.

Original convex exports retain their earlier behavior, so they do not certify every multi-face corner physically. No automatic assembly sequence, tool-access simulation, structural analysis or firing simulation is provided. A valid surface and a printable outline are useful starting points; a successful scrap dry-fit is the next check.