JavaGami consists of five windows.

The Shapes window contains different palettes of starting shapes (use the menu bar at the top of the window to navigate to different palettes). There are five sets of built-in shapes — Basic Shapes (the Platonic Solids); the 13 Archimedean Solids; Prisms and Antiprisms; the duals of the 13 Archimedean Solids; and 20 of the 92 Johnson Solids.

Clicking on a shape loads the shape into the 3D object window, the Wire Frame window (where you can drag the mouse over a wireframe rendering of the polyhedron).  The folding net (two-dimensional folding pattern of the shape) appears in the Net Draw Area. The Net Decoration Tools window contains simple colors and fills for decorating the folding net.

---

Coloring the Folding Net of a Polyhedron

Solid Colors:
In the Net Decoration Tools window, select “fill” or “draw” and then select a solid color. Click on the folding net in the Net Draw Area window to either fill a polygon with a solid color to do draw free-hand designs on the folding net.

Textures:
Select either the Textures or Textures2 tab in the Net Decoration Tools window. Select the texture, and then click on the folding net in the Net Draw Area window.

 

---

Saving and Printing:

Once the net is decorated, save the file as a .png. You can open this file with Preview on a Mac or your favorite image-viewing software on a PC to print. (JavaGami currently does not support direct output to a printer).

 

 

---

Stretching and Shrinking
JavaGami allows the user to apply linear maps along the x, y, or z-axes of a polyhedron. In this example, we will take a cube and stretch it by a factor of 2 along the z-axis. First load a cube by clicking on the cube in the Shapes palette. Then, in the 3D object window, select the “Stretch” option, then enter the number 2 in the text box, click on the “z” direction, and click unfold. The new shape will appear and the system will generate the corresponding folding net.

---