383 research outputs found
Continuously Flattening Polyhedra Using Straight Skeletons
We prove that a surprisingly simple algorithm folds the surface of every convex polyhedron, in any dimension, into a flat folding by a continuous motion, while preserving intrinsic distances and avoiding crossings. The flattening respects the straight-skeleton gluing, meaning that points of the polyhedron touched by a common ball inside the polyhedron come into contact in the flat folding, which answers an open question in the book Geometric Folding Algorithms. The primary creases in our folding process can be found in quadratic time, though necessarily, creases must roll continuously, and we show that the full crease pattern can be exponential in size. We show that our method solves the fold-and-cut problem for convex polyhedra in any dimension. As an additional application, we show how a limiting form of our algorithm gives a general design technique for flat origami tessellations, for any spiderweb (planar graph with all-positive equilibrium stress)
Discrete conformal maps and ideal hyperbolic polyhedra
We establish a connection between two previously unrelated topics: a
particular discrete version of conformal geometry for triangulated surfaces,
and the geometry of ideal polyhedra in hyperbolic three-space. Two triangulated
surfaces are considered discretely conformally equivalent if the edge lengths
are related by scale factors associated with the vertices. This simple
definition leads to a surprisingly rich theory featuring M\"obius invariance,
the definition of discrete conformal maps as circumcircle preserving piecewise
projective maps, and two variational principles. We show how literally the same
theory can be reinterpreted to addresses the problem of constructing an ideal
hyperbolic polyhedron with prescribed intrinsic metric. This synthesis enables
us to derive a companion theory of discrete conformal maps for hyperbolic
triangulations. It also shows how the definitions of discrete conformality
considered here are closely related to the established definition of discrete
conformality in terms of circle packings.Comment: 62 pages, 22 figures. v2: typos corrected, references added and
updated, minor changes in exposition. v3, final version: typos corrected,
improved exposition, some material moved to appendice
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