segmented shape rendering

It's a look that is very popular and you know it if you saw it i just can't describe it very well. I want to iterate a shape ie a sphere but only render parts of it with different iterations like, a thick ring here, or a corner eighth there.. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9I9rivqE7A or many others for the kind of thing i'm talking about. Doesn't have to be iterated just want to achieve this effect where there are instances of the same object but only certain parts of it are visible on each instance. Unfort vimeo is down so i cant look for other examples but i hope you guys get what i mean. Similar to arrays in c4d but variable with each copy. Sure it's been done before but don't kow what to search for, any ideas?