The connectedness of Sierpi\'nski sponges with rotational and reflectional components and associated graph-directed systems

We provide two methods to characterize the connectedness of all $d$-dimensional generalized Sierpi\'nski sponges whose corresponding IFSs are allowed to have rotational and reflectional components. Our approach is to reduce it to an intersection problem between the coordinates of graph-directed attractors. More precisely, let $(K_1,\ldots,K_n)$ be a Cantor-type graph-directed attractor in $\mathbb{R}^d$. By creating an auxiliary graph, we provide an effective criterion for whether $K_i\cap K_j$ is empty for every pair of $1\leq i,j\leq n$. Moreover, the emptiness can be checked by examining only a finite number of geometric approximations of the attractor. The approach is also applicable to more general graph-directed systems.