ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB: STAND-ALONE: PLUG-IN / ADD-ON: Shodor.org - an education website's free tessellation program that works through your web browser while you're surfing the Net.; NEW: Tesselmaniac - $30 stand alone tessellation creation program for Windows and Mac, first sold in January, 2014; Tesselmania - Pretty old stand alone program for Windows and Mac. Tessellation Creator. Grade: 3rd to 5th, 6th to 8th. A tessellation is a repeating pattern of polygons that covers a plane with no gaps or overlaps. What kind of tessellations can you make out of regular polygons? This interactive is optimized for your desktop and tablet. Tessellation Artist. Mathematics and Art come together! First - just play with it! Try the different tools and see what happens. Tiling Directions. You can control the spacing: Blue dot controls x-y spacing of grid; Red dot controls rotation of the grid; Best to just try dragging the dots to see what happens! A tessellation is the tiling of a plane using one or more geometric shapes such that there are no overlaps or gaps. In other words, a tessellation is a never-ending pattern on a flat 2-D surface (such as a piece of paper) where all of the shapes fit together perfectly like puzzle pieces, and the pattern can go on forever. Examples of Tessellations.

Free easy-to-use online Java-based program.
www.SHODOR.org/interactivate/activities/Tessellate/
also available on a CD, if you donate to Shodor.

Shodor.org is a website for teachers. It has lesson plans, activity plans, teaching tools... what a treasure chest it is!

For us, Shodor.org's main pages of interest are this tessellation engine and their search page which gives us an amaaaazing one hundred and eleven activities, student evaluation tools, and lesson plans for 'tessellation'.

INSTALL
Just click on this link to their web page. No installation is necessary, beyond having a functional web browser, Internet connection, and Java.

If you don't see a screen like the one pictured on the right side of my page, then perhaps you need to install Java. This is particularly true if you see a small jigsaw puzzle piece and the words 'plugin required'. (Java is a free engine that makes other programs work. It's like Flash or JavaScript.) You can find and install it at Java.com.

If installing Java doesn't make this run, then you might need to shut off your web browser and restart it. If that doesn't work, then perhaps you need to adjust the security level for your Internet browsing, or tell your web browser (e.g., Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera) to turn on 'scripting languages' like JavaScript, Java, and Flash.

DRAWING TOOLS
Its drawing toolkit is very limited. That makes this software easy to learn, yes, but after using it once or thrice you may wish for more.

You start with one of three basic 'tile' shapes: square, triangle, or hexagon. You click on the 'edit edges' or 'edit corner' buttons on the right side of the screen, then click-and-drag the outline of your tile with your mouse. In this way you can add new corners, move the whole tile, drag corners around the page, and drag the entire tile around the page.

All lines are black, and there is no way to adjust the line width or its color, nor to draw interior lines like eyes, mouth, fish scales, fur, and so on. You cannot even make curved lines, although you can 'break' an existing line into joined straight segments (essentially creating a new corner).

ERASING There is no eraser. There is no 'undo' button except 'reset', but 'reset' brings you all the way back to a fresh beginning.

HELP MENU
The help menu is nonexistent, although there's a very nice picture-filled tutorial about how to make a screenshot of your work to edit or save in another program such as Windows' 'Paint'.

CONCLUSIONS
How do we rate this program? It's intuitive & easy to start creating immediately, but lacks almost every basic drawing tool, editing and file-saving feature, & advanced tessellation feature. Like the Chinese food served in American restaurants, it's entertaining but half an hour afterward you'll be wanting something more substantial.

Tessellations can be produced using any drawing package, even quite simple ones. In our 'Do it yourself' section we show how this can be done fairly easily. This is often more satisfying than using purpose built software and the results can be worth it and sometimes unexpected 8-)

However, there are several programs available that can help in the process and most can produce tessellations using all 17 wallpaper types and more. Some are easier to use than others but, if you have a pre-conceived idea of a subject you want, it is much more difficult.

The easiest way to produce tessellations using these programs is to let the software 'suggest' a subject. All of them will produce a mesh outline, or lattice, according to the symmetry rules you set. You then have to push and pull the lines, add and remove corners and points, etc, until you have shapes you recognise. You still have to interpret the results.

Types There are few dedicated stand alone programs. A favourite of mine is 'Tesselmaniac'. Other packages 'plug in' to a main graphics program and use it to produce the actual artwork. A few are covered here - see below. The disadvantage of these is that you need to own the main program - and this can be expensive. Yet another way is by using a specially designed Java applet and producing tessellations directly on line. If you want to use the result, it has to be 'grabbed' off the screen.

Details of some programs follow together with some example tessellations and screenshots from each. The examples include their symmetry types so you can replicate them if you have the program.

Tessellations Activity