Girih Tiling

(Note: this requires a mouse. The eraser doesn't work on touchscreen and there's no undo!)

When you're ready to draw, go to girihdesigner.com…

But first, here are some samples (with instructions below).

Guide to girih-designer's menus...

Tiling Mode

Select between the five Girih tiles and start tiling. (Tiling mode defaults to a plain display style to simplify tile recognition.) Note: the trash can looks like a drinking glass.

Styling Mode

Choose between different color presets or customize the display style.

svg export

Export your pattern as an SVG file for further processing and resolution independent printing. (In safari the svg appears as a new web page that you can save.)

File dialog

Save and load your patterns to your local browser storage. (They will be in that same browser next time.)

Useful keyboard shortcuts

- Q, W, spacebar—Rotate mouse tile
- 1-5 — Select tile
- backspace — Delete last tile
- E — Eraser tool
- - or + — Zoom
- Arrow keys ⬅︎⬆︎⬇︎➡︎ — Scroll canvas
- Tab — Toggle Palette

PS: Matthew Poindexter figured out a (long) way to turn the svg into a 3D object that can be extruded in sketchup and rotated in quick view.

Essentially:

SVG->[Adobe illustrator]->SVG->[Blender]->3DS->[SketchUp]

Details:

1. Open the girihdesigner SVG in Illustrator.
2. Ungroup any and all groups (continuously select all and right-click on any groups and groups within groups).
3. Save the SVG file again from illustrator.
4. Import the SVG into blender.
5. (Optional but not a bad idea: delete the camera, light and default cube)
6. Hit A in Blender to select all.
7. Export a 3DS file from blender.
8. Import the 3DS file into SketchUp.
9. In Sketchup you’ll probably want to do two things:
  - Scale up the imported shape quite a lot (compare with the person around to see if your shape is tiny. Push-pull doesn’t work well on very small shapes).
  - Explode any groups as needed.

Page updated

Report abuse