Thanks.
I wasn't necessarily thinking of equilaterals and should have said fewer regular shapes. I think in years past I had found those tetra's, octa's and iso's but due to senility or an early case of alzheimer's I couldn't find any tutorials for the past couple of weeks, except that link I mentioned. More exactly, I was thinking of Epcot's Space Ship Earth which, in my mind's eye, I thought was made from two or three regular triangles reiterated to make a sphere. Imagine my embarrassment when I just looked it up (having only now remembered it's name) and found it actually has a lot of "fudging."
As a matter of fact, I think I just remembered a previous search for geodesic tutorials that I found by looking up "soccer ball" so I'll try that now...
My apologies if I was a bother and my thanks for your help.