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progeCad has a free autocad clone. It uses many of the same keyboard shortcuts and everything, if you can use AutoCad you can use progecad!

http://www.progesoft.us/index.pl?id=398 ... ry;op=show

folypers wrote:, so I'm going to make a 'mobile headquarters' with 'exterior power supplies', 'storage bays' and 'living quarters' over the next years to eventually go for it! It's also posted on this forum, maybe your Physics skills could help me out a little!

This is exactly what we plan to do using the superbus. Use the bus, drive around the world, earn money, find land, buy land, build dome, Live happily ever after. If you're looking for people to Convoy with we'd be more than happy to tour with ya.

progeCad has a free autocad clone. It uses many of the same keyboard shortcuts and everything, if you can use AutoCad you can use progecad!

Dude thank you sooo much, I'll check that out ASAP!! =D

Then I could use your advice, troubleshooting, comments,... I've already put up some basic plumbing designs and I'm going to post electrical designs in a few hours. Come check me out the title says 'MOBILE HEADQUARTERS PROJECT', so you can't miss it

This is just a very quick sketch on progeCAD of the first floor design for my dome. THANK YOU SO MUCH to the person who pointed out progeCAD, its everything I need and simpler to use than AutoCAD I deffo recommend it.

A quick run down of what the colours mean are as follows.
Red = Structural support
Cyan = Floorboard joist (I think thats the right word... basically a bit of wood to give the second floor floorboards something to rest on.)
Yellow = EITHER a support going through 2 levels or a level change. For example, steps and ramps are all outlined yellow.
Green = Wall
Pink = Feature in this case a covered veranda for the outdoor food area.

Just to give you a quick idea, the area on the right is the vehicle garage, this is the first thing we're setting up, it is connected to the main dome building via a corridor that also leads out to an external garden. We'll be growing most of our food out here until the dome is complete (Level 3 is a greenhouse) The dome itself is 27 feet across with a main support beam in the middle that penetrates to the third floor. The surrounding supports also penetrate to the third floor. Section 5 of the dome (just after the 6oclock mark) is a bathroom. sections 1 and 2 are the kitchen and 3 and 4 are a temp living area until the building is complete.
In the garden there are some stairs leading up to a balcony which goes around the left side of the dome. Underneath this balcony is numerous supports but also the main entry walk way. I should point out that this bottom floor with the exception of the garden is going to be underground. The only parts visible from the ground are the top two floors. We've done this (And yes, we know the work involved =P ) So we can take advantage of the insulation underground, (there's a name for this, I just can't remember it.) The outside of all the buildings will be a steep slope and we're gonna try to hide as much of the entry slope into the garage area as much as we can. We're trying to blend in with the environment as much as possible so it doesn't look like we're just ruining the landscape with some weird construction.

The lower floor will have an adobe/natural clay wall with a guttered top, the metal frame from our dome then fits into this circular gutter to provide the 2nd and 3rd floors. It is then adobed/clayed in and set. We're not 100% on what to use to cover the exterior of the dome but it'll probably be some plastic sheeting wound and strapped tightly to the metal structure, we'll then grow vine plants around the edge on the balcony to give us a more natural look. I'm thinking things like sweet peas or runner beans so we can provide food for ourselves at the same time.

The other thing worth noting is that this dome and its surrounding buildings can easily be built in sections. For example, once the corridor from the garage is built you can then build the 2nd quadrant of the dome and wall some of it in temporarily to provide basic shelter for anyone who's getting tired of living in the vehicles. You don't even need to dig it all out in one go either. From quadrant 2 you can build up all the way around to quad 5 to provide yourself with a bathroom outside of the vehicles. With this set up it is also easier to connect the water systems (situated near the steps outside) to both the toilet and the kitchen which is eventually located in quads 1 and 2. Quads 7 and 8 is the entry foyer area with stairs and a door leading through to the back of the dome. Its connected to the entry way on the left you can kinda make out the green in the picture enough to see the wall in quad 8.

I hope this helps with any rough designs you might be planning or have done. Its a good idea to get a scrap book of sorts and just keep all your plans in there. Always handy to have plenty of notebooks around too. You can never have enough ideas down on paper.

I look forward to anyones suggestions on this, this is currently my forth revision of this design and I can easily see it reach revision 10 before I'm completely happy with it. Theres plenty of stuff I haven't mentioned, like the power supply being stored in the garage until the building is completely set up, or why we've even got a garage in the first place but trust me it's all there for a reason =]

Peace!

And these are the upper two floors. The colour codes change slightly but I'll try my best to work you through these poorly drawn designs. (Oddly the ones drawn by hand look much better...)

Starting with the second floor plan. Pink is still a feature but this time instead of a veranda it's a wooden rail to stop people falling off the balcony. I guess pink could also be used to describe the balcony areas layout as well.
Silver/Gray indicates metal. The dome/ring around the outside is still 27 feet across since the underground floor was built straight up. (This gives loads more room on the lower two floors and allows you to increase the size of the third)
Dark green is something from the first floor (underground floor) protruding through into the second. Things like the outside garden and the stairs leading down to the ground floor.
Yellow is still stairs/downramps.
Red is still structural (The beams near the center of the dome are used to support the flooring for level 3.)
Dark red is the outer layer, this is basically earth/mud/plantlife etc,

This second floor is then divided into living areas, an extra bathroom, another kitchen as we eventually plan to close off the lower section for improvements and renovations as time wears away on our structure.
The balcony runs around the exterior of the dome for about 3/4. The reason the top of these plans has no line to show a cut off for the "decking" is because if enough people are into this we plan to set up a commune and eventually the decking will just lead onto a dirt track that leads through other buildings and gardens. It'd be awesome if we found an area with a 7 foot drop in it and just build into that but things are never that simple.

Level 3 is the final floor.
The green here signifies the top of the dome.
The silver/grey shows the base of the second floor.

The third floor is a greenhouse, we're planning plenty of windows up here but from current designs we estimate it to be about 10 feet across. This should be more than enough to grow food for the people living in the dome and as more people join us we can expand out, maybe even start growing small fields worth of food. Like a proper commune, ya know?

Anyway I've gotta tidy these designs up, no way is this the totally finished product so lemme know what you're thinking. I really hope sharing these designs with you has inspired you with some creational ideas. And as usual I'm missing out a shed load here, I'll put up plans for the water systems and electrical some point in the future but I'll probably be referencing some of your plans frequently. Take care and lemme know if this helps =D

Wow, knux, that looks nice! Will especially help me with floor design. I'll have to play around with progeCAD. And anyone have an opinion on using SketchUp on something like this? I've heard SketchUp tends to be more for artistic rendering than engineering plans, but I've also heard it's a surprisingly powerful program. Plus one of the benefits of a dome is its simplicity and symmetry. I'm all for using more than one program, of course, especially now that there are quite a few free designing programs.

I've been considering building a dome too. One thing that I've been wondering about is what to make it out of. Steel construction pipe would be certainly strong enough, but it's hard to squash and more expensive than steel conduit. I've read that people can build 40' domes from 1 1/2 inch conduit, but I don't know if that would be able to handle New England weather. A lot of the info out there is for dessert climates where snow doesn't need to be taken into account. If anyone's has any knowledge about materials, I'd appreciate it.

Also utilities. How expensive would it be to dig a well? Or septic tank? Do either of those have to be installed by a certified professional, or could I get some friends to help me myself. And the building itself. How would I get the land certified for residential building? Would it need to be built to code if it's a private home? I am sure there's answers to these online, but if someone has knowledge I'd appreciate it, or if they could point me in the right direction.

Hey bro!
Just a quick reply, you can totally build/make/install your own septic tank for very cheap, if you've got a good mind it's easy to work out. I dunno if this would help but try checking out Grey water/Black water systems.
As for the building materials, if you don't have to worry about Snow then I guess thats a huge advantage. The good thing about the dome I designed is that the first floor is made almost entirely out of Wood(trees) and adobe (Clay) so all our resources for that level come from the Earth. The metal frame on top isn't going to be majorly strong materials wise but there's technical things you can do to improve the strength without spending a bus load on harder materials. Tensioning the bottom of your down is a good start. Getting the math right is the other trick =P
Lemme know if this has helped. Good luck fellow domer!

Thank you for posting the steps.