On Tue, 01 Jun 1999 05:50:13 +0200, Peter Santo
<san### [at] poolinformatikrwth-aachende> wrote:


>I would like to render a sphere with an arbitrary number of points (or
>smaller spheres) on its surface that I want to distribute equally (so
>the distance to the neighbouring points is nearly equal for every
>point). I suppose there is no perfect solution for that problem, but I
>would like to approximate it as good as possible.
>
>A funktion could look like this:
>Input: Number of points (n)
>Output: n pairs of angles (horizontal and vertical from sphere's center)
>that describe the location of the points. (alternatively <x,y,z>-coords
>on the surface)
>
>Of course, the solution is easy for n = 1(trivial), 2(line),
>3(traingle), 4(tetrahedron), 6(octahedron), 8(cube) and some more. I
>also checked http://www.cris.com/~rjbono/html/domes.html , but geodesic
>domes always have a "magic" number of corners.
>
>Does anyone have an idea for this? Any help would be appreciated (also
>"It does not work, because..").

The question is tricky because "equal distribution" on a sphere turns
out not to be really well defined.  Nonetheless, there are solutions.
The FAQ for the group comp.graphics.algorithms has pointers to several
discussions and even specific point sets for many numbers.  If you
can't find the stuff referenced by the FAQ, email me and I will send
you some tech info and point sets.

Jerry Anning
clem "at" dhol "dot" com

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