/aperiodic-monotile

Smith, Myers, Kaplan and Goodman-Strauss's aperiodic monotile, in a variety of formats

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The aperiodic monotile in a variety of formats

This repository contains code and vector image files to produce the aperiodic monotiles found by David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss.

There's a family of related shapes, each made of 14 edges (though two of the edges are parallel and adjacent so look like a single long edge). Each edge is one of two lengths, 𝑎 or 𝑏. The angles in the shape don't change. There is an interactive tool to draw the tiles with any choice of the parameters and download in SVG or PNG format.

There are three interesting monotiles, which each tile the plane aperiodically.

A 'hat':

A hat-like polygon

A 'turtle':

A turtle-like polygon

And a 'spectre':

A ghost-like shape with curved edges

Each file produces a single copy of the tile. Several copies of the tile fit together to tile the plane. The 'hat' and 'turtle' monotiles only tile along with their reflections; the 'spectre' monotile tiles without reflections.

The files are:

Hat tile

  • hat-monotile.svg - A vector graphics file for use in programs such as Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator.
  • hat-monotile-kites.svg - A vector graphics file showing the construction of each tile from kites.
  • hat-monotile.scad - Code to produce the tile in OpenSCAD, for 3D printing.
  • hat-monotile.stl - An STL file produced using the OpenSCAD code, which can be sent directly to a 3D printer, or manipulated in other 3D software.
  • hat-monotile.logo - A LOGO script to draw the outline of the title with Turtle graphics.
  • hat-monotile.dxf - A DXF vector file, used by some CAD tools. Created by Adam Greenblatt.

Turtle tile

Spectre tile