Continuous Blooming of Convex Polyhedra

We construct the first two continuous bloomings of all convex polyhedra. First, the source unfolding can be continuously bloomed. Second, any unfolding of a convex polyhedron can be refined (further cut, by a linear number of cuts) to have a continuous blooming.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Nonorthogonal Polyhedra Built from Rectangles

We prove that any polyhedron of genus zero or genus one built out of rectangular faces must be an orthogonal polyhedron, but that there are nonorthogonal polyhedra of genus seven all of whose faces are rectangles. This leads to a resolution of a question posed by Biedl, Lubiw, and Sun [BLS99].Comment: 19 pages, 20 figures. Revised version makes two corrections: The statement of the old Lemma 14 was incorrect. It has been corrected and merged with Lemma 13 now. Second, Figure 19 (a skew quadrilateral) was incorrect, and is now removed. It played no substantive role in the proof

Unfolding and Reconstructing Polyhedra

This thesis covers work on two topics: unfolding polyhedra into the plane and reconstructing polyhedra from partial information. For each topic, we describe previous work in the area and present an array of new research and results. Our work on unfolding is motivated by the problem of characterizing precisely when overlaps will occur when a polyhedron is cut along edges and unfolded. By contrast to previous work, we begin by classifying overlaps according to a notion of locality. This classification enables us to focus upon particular types of overlaps, and use the results to construct examples of polyhedra with interesting unfolding properties. The research on unfolding is split into convex and non-convex cases. In the non-convex case, we construct a polyhedron for which every edge unfolding has an overlap, with fewer faces than all previously known examples. We also construct a non-convex polyhedron for which every edge unfolding has a particularly trivial type of overlap. In the convex case, we construct a series of example polyhedra for which every unfolding of various types has an overlap. These examples disprove some existing conjectures regarding algorithms to unfold convex polyhedra without overlaps. The work on reconstruction is centered around analyzing the computational complexity of a number of reconstruction questions. We consider two classes of reconstruction problems. The first problem is as follows: given a collection of edges in space, determine whether they can be rearranged by translation only to form a polygon or polyhedron. We consider variants of this problem by introducing restrictions like convexity, orthogonality, and non-degeneracy. All of these problems are NP-complete, though some are proved to be only weakly NP-complete. We then consider a second, more classical problem: given a collection of edges in space, determine whether they can be rearranged by translation and/or rotation to form a polygon or polyhedron. This problem is NP-complete for orthogonal polygons, but polynomial algorithms exist for non-orthogonal polygons. For polyhedra, it is shown that if degeneracies are allowed then the problem is NP-hard, but the complexity is still unknown for non-degenerate polyhedra

Reconstruction of Orthogonal Polyhedra

In this thesis I study reconstruction of orthogonal polyhedral surfaces and orthogonal polyhedra from partial information about their boundaries. There are three main questions for which I provide novel results. The first question is "Given the dual graph, facial angles and edge lengths of an orthogonal polyhedral surface or polyhedron, is it possible to reconstruct the dihedral angles?" The second question is "Given the dual graph, dihedral angles and edge lengths of an orthogonal polyhedral surface or polyhedron, is it possible to reconstruct the facial angles?" The third question is "Given the vertex coordinates of an orthogonal polyhedral surface or polyhedron, is it possible to reconstruct the edges and faces, possibly after rotating?" For the first two questions, I show that the answer is "yes" for genus-0 orthogonal polyhedra and polyhedral surfaces under some restrictions, and provide linear time algorithms. For the third question, I provide results and algorithms for orthogonally convex polyhedra. Many related problems are studied as well

When can a net fold to a polyhedron?

In this paper, we study the problem of whether a polyhedron can be obtained from a net by folding along the creases. We show that this problem can be solved in polynomial time if the dihedral angle at each crease is given, and it becomes NP-hard if these angles are unknown. We also study the case when the net has rigid faces that should not intersect during the folding process

When Can a Net Fold to a Polyhedron?

this paper, we study the problem of whether a polyhedron can be obtained from a net , i.e., a polygon and a set of creases, by folding along the creases. We consider two cases, depending on whether we are given the dihedral angle at each crease. If these dihedral angles are given the problem can be solved in polynomial time by the simple expedient of performing the folding. If the dihedral angles are not given the problem is NP-complete, at least for orthogonal polyhedra. We then turn to the actual folding process, and show an example of a net with rigid faces that can, in the sense above, be folded to form an orthogonal polyhedron, but only by allowing faces to intersect each other during the folding process