English

Folding Polyominoes into (Poly)Cubes

Computational Geometry 2018-11-20 v2

Abstract

We study the problem of folding a polyomino PP into a polycube QQ, allowing faces of QQ to be covered multiple times. First, we define a variety of folding models according to whether the folds (a) must be along grid lines of PP or can divide squares in half (diagonally and/or orthogonally), (b) must be mountain or can be both mountain and valley, (c) can remain flat (forming an angle of 180180^\circ), and (d) must lie on just the polycube surface or can have interior faces as well. Second, we give all the inclusion relations among all models that fold on the grid lines of PP. Third, we characterize all polyominoes that can fold into a unit cube, in some models. Fourth, we give a linear-time dynamic programming algorithm to fold a tree-shaped polyomino into a constant-size polycube, in some models. Finally, we consider the triangular version of the problem, characterizing which polyiamonds fold into a regular tetrahedron.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1712.09317,
  title  = {Folding Polyominoes into (Poly)Cubes},
  author = {Oswin Aichholzer and Michael Biro and Erik D. Demaine and Martin L. Demaine and David Eppstein and Sándor P. Fekete and Adam Hesterberg and Irina Kostitsyna and Christiane Schmidt},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.09317},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

30 pages, 19 figures, full version of extended abstract that appeared in CCCG 2015. (Change over previous version: Fixed a missing reference.)

R2 v1 2026-06-22T23:29:27.346Z