Jim, your advice on converting the plywood deck forms is what Vaclav also suggested. I guess my initial query was more out of curiosity (I teach geometry). Next year, I will be asking my senior students to produce panel shapes(scaled) from a table of offsets and then produce a model. I am sure I can link that up to our syllabus. When I teach a topic I always show the students real life examples of where the geometry can be used. For extra credit I was going to ask students to compare deck shapes and indicate advantages and disadvantages.
Cheers.