How to Play with Twist Blocks
Posted by Madonna Yoder on
What are twist blocks?
Whenever I look at tessellation crease patterns, I mentally break them up into their component parts.
With twist-based tessellations, those parts are twists and they're connected by pleats.
The good news is that the same set of twists are used over and over again in different tessellations, which means that we can treat them like building blocks and drag and drop to snap them together!
I made a set of digital twist blocks in both square and triangle grid for my Tessellations by Tiles students last fall and found that they really speed up the diagramming process - sometimes as fast as 10 minutes.
My students have been using these blocks to create their own designs - and so can you!
How do you get them?
This is a bonus that I made for my students, but it's so useful that I decided to give it away here - for free!
When you submit your info you'll get an email with instructions on how to download and use the files.
Be sure to download the files on a laptop or desktop though - I don't know of any vector graphics software that runs on phones.
I recommend installing Inkscape to open and edit the files - it's a free open-source software that I use personally for all my diagramming needs.