I made this using Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator. This program is available as a free trial download at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.
This polyhedron has, as faces, a dozen regular pentagons, thirty rhombi, and sixty irregular heptagons. I made this using Stella 4d, which is available as a free trial download at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.
This mathematical illustration of a sunflower is made of fourteen regular heptagons, fourteen irregular pentagons, and a single tetradecagon.
Heptagons only appear infrequently in interesting polyhedra. I recently found a few that I like.
To form the first of these solids, shown above, I started with the icosidodecahedron, dropped the symmetry of the model from icosahedral to tetrahedral, and then stellated it twice using Stella 4d (available here). To obtain the model shown below, which also features heptagons and triangles, I stellated it once more. Both of these polyhedra have pyritohedral symmetry.
To form the next model shown, I began with an rhombicosidodecahedron, set it to tetrahedral symmetry, and stellated it eight times. This produces a chiral solid with tetrahedral symmetry.
For the last of these four polyhedra featuring heptagons, I began with the snub dodecahedron, dropped the symmetry of the model down from icosahedral to tetrahedral, and then stellated it sixty-one times. The resulting solid is chiral, with tetrahedral symmetry.
Created using Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator; see this website to try it for yourself!
For some reason I do not fully understand, polyhedra featuring heptagons, even if irregular, do not appear often, at least not in my geometrical investigations — so I was pleased to find these three, using Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator, available at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.
