The blog of @tesseralis, a.k.a Nat Alison.
Posts
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Polyhedra Viewer - Data Structures
To encode operations on polyhedra, you need a data structure the describes what a polyhedron is, and a way to tell which operations transform one polyhedron into another. In this section, I’ll be discussing the two main data structures that make the Polyhedra Viewer possible: the graph of polyhedral operations and the object used to model an actual polyhedron. I’ll go over my process of iterating on these structures and the things I learned and wish to improve on.
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Polyhedra Viewer - Inspiration and Design
I wanted the Polyhedra Viewer to be accessible, so it was important that I make an app that looked good. The polyhedra websites I used to go to were maintained by (always male) enthusiasts or professors and always had a certain aesthetic, or lack thereof, to them. They almost always used basic HTML with little or no styling. When they did include polyhedra models, they were in an outdated file format called VRML, and worse, an old version of that format that can’t be converted into a different one. They were inaccessible to anyone that didn’t already have a mathematical background or initial interest.
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Polyhedra Viewer - The Story Part
“What drove you to make this?”
“…I’m a nerd.”
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Making the Polyhedra Viewer
Over the past seven months, I’ve been working on the Polyhedra Viewer, a math visualization tool that lets you transform polyhedra into each other and explore their relationships. It’s been a tremendous undertaking, especially for a single person, and I’d like to share my story on how and why I made it and the things I’ve learned from doing so.
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