Why these eight shapes
They cover ~95% of practical volume questions: boxes (storage, shipping, room dimensions), cylinders (tanks, pipes, columns), spheres (balls, planets, droplets), cones (funnels, decorative shapes), pyramids (architectural, geological), torus (donuts, magnetic-coil cross-sections), ellipsoids (planetary bodies, particle physics). Cuboids and cubes are common enough to deserve separate inputs.