English

Building with Blocks: Enumerating Polyforms on Tilings

Combinatorics 2026-02-27 v1

Abstract

In areas as diverse as contemporary art, play structures, climbing equipment, and modular construction toys, we see the presence of building block-like polyhedral complexes, which are generalizations of the pieces in the game Tetris. We give an algorithm for counting the number of nn-celled structures on polygonal and polyhedral cells of certain periodic two- and three-dimensional tilings; moreover, we count these structures up to translations, rotations, and reflections of the tiling. We describe this algorithm with respect to structures in the snub square tiling, provide numerical data related to existing three-dimensional art and structures, and suggest puzzles based on these constructions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.23301,
  title  = {Building with Blocks: Enumerating Polyforms on Tilings},
  author = {Bert Dobbelaere and Peter Kagey and Drake Thomas and Andrés R. Vindas-Meléndez},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.23301},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

11 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. Submitted to Bridges 2026

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:54:19.965Z