"Just as there are primary and secondary colors, are there primary and secondary 2 and 3 dimensional shapes.?"

"Dealing with polygons, you can say that triangles are ""primary shapes"": you can cut by diagonals any polygon into triangles. For 3d shapes the question is less simple, but you may consider tetragones as a ""primary polyhedra"". All this only deals with polygonals and polyhedra. For general shapes you must define better what would ""primary"" mean to you: what properties, what do you mean if you say ""it can be used to generate every other shape""... generate by which point of view? (for example, you may say that polygons generate every other shape because you can approximate every shape by polygons ad close as you want)"