More origami solids

There are a bunch of interesting programming projects hiding within the subject of origami, and unit origami in particular. Certainly one of the most straightforward is to write a program that will read some form of origami notation and create a 3D geometry file of the result, which you can then render. Or you can use the same information to create folding diagrams. These are both very hard problems if you go into them deeply. The folding problem requires keeping track of the thickness of the paper at each fold and how bit slides around (for example, if you have two layers of paper involved in a fold, the outermost layer requires more paper than the inner layer). The diagramming problem is pretty tricky, because getting the right point of view and picking the right steps to illustrate it are very personal choices. I made the diagrams in these two columns by hand with a computer-aided drafting program. With my trusty calculator, I computed all the angles and lengths to make sure that everything lined up just where it ought to