Attempting to create domes/vaults

Hello Grasshoppers,

I am a student studying this for the first time. We were given a script which creates Vault/domes as a tool to understand the case study VoltaDOM project by Skylar Tabbits. 

The scripting was very new to me and I had spent a long time just staring and changing parameters trying to understand what each component is trying to do, but I still have no clue in regards to one part of the code. The forum seems like my only source of help at the moment, hopefully someone could explain a bit about what this script does and what it could do to produce more interesting outcomes. 

I have attached a screen shot of the outcome produced by the original script given as well as what mine is looking like at the minute, and my own replicated script, much appreciated!

Cheers