Playing with hexagons

[ivla]

How to make hexagonal structure on the cylinder surface.
(WARNING: orange is the selection color in this example)

Some theory before action:

For convenience, let's take the side of the hexagon equal to about 1 unit.
Here is the proportions:


Assume that we need 16 hexagons that fit around the circle (so we must use 32-section cylinder for that).
The formula for the circle radius is: (hex-side-length * cylinder-sections * 0.866025) / (2 * pi)

So for "one-unit" hexagon we need a cylinder of 0.5 unit height and 4.410629 unit radius.

Make it and select the vertices like this:


Delete selected:


Select upper and lower faces:


Extrude it by normal for 0.5 unit:






After extrusion use "mirror":


Repeat face selection and "mirror" as you need:


Select two edge like this:


Select similar edges (hotkey "i"):


Delete it and swittch to vertices select mode, then select one vertice like this:


Select similar vertices (hotkey "i"):


Delete selected:


Base form is ready.

(to be continued)