Girih Tile Designer

January 26, 2016 4:46 AM

Girih Designer

(design girih patterns in your browser, and save them as SVG. WebGL required.)

posted by scruss (16 comments total)

Gorgeous. Now where's the tiler who will make this magic happen in my bathroom?
posted by taff at 5:18 AM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Anyone know about 3d printing for tile? Just browsing shapeways, and it still seems expensive. Would be really curious if you could do girih tiles affordably, or even cheaply...
posted by brainimplant at 6:07 AM on January 26, 2016

What taff said.

Also: this is doing wonders for my anxiety levels.
posted by LMGM at 6:07 AM on January 26, 2016

That is a lovely app. And I design control software for digital finishing tables which certainly could cut tiles out of vinyl flooring (video shows a lighter-duty application, though). Someone in signmaking could probably do the cutting work for you, then you can assemble the pattern again at home. You would probably have to assemble the cut files yourself, so that all tiles of colour A goes in one file and colour B in another file etc. PDF files can be imported and used for cutting.
posted by Harald74 at 6:51 AM on January 26, 2016

This is fantastic, thanks for posting!

I don't know about 3D printing, but I thought of these press-on "tile" squares.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:09 AM on January 26, 2016

Hey what a fun tool! What's missing is anything to help with periodicity; I quickly lost the game backing myself into an untileable corner. Maybe that's the art here.

It's funny, 3d printing tiles seems like the exact opposite fabrication technology from what you'd want. 3d printing is great for one-off custom designed objects. Tiles are mass-produced objects all alike. OTOH I don't know where in the US you could find tiles with these shapes, so the desire to fabricate them is appreciated. I think Harald74's on the right track with the idea of using a cutter though. You could do up some cheap plywood tiles with a laser cutter very easily.
posted by Nelson at 7:20 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm definitely going to run some coloured construction paper through the old pen plotter with these designs tonight, and cut them out. The output SVG from Girih Designer works well with Inkscape, and Inkscape can drive a bunch of cutters and plotters.
posted by scruss at 7:42 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hey what a fun tool! What's missing is anything to help with periodicity; I quickly lost the game backing myself into an untileable corner. Maybe that's the art here.

Some kind of radial/fractal repetition might help, but I don't know how you'd implement it without causing some design constraints. Neat.
posted by BrotherCaine at 9:59 AM on January 26, 2016

I remember having these in elementary school, and we'd regularly make enormous patterns with them. Assuming the right sealant laid on top, they might work for floor tiling.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:13 AM on January 26, 2016

This is less easy than I thought it would be.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:32 AM on January 26, 2016

opens girih designer

sees a bunch of network calls from this page go out to bitcoin site 'coinbase.com'

What's up with the coinbase connection exactly?
posted by edheil at 1:47 PM on January 26, 2016

> What's up with the coinbase connection exactly?

The creator has a bitcoin tipjar on the About page.
posted by scruss at 2:27 PM on January 26, 2016

Arrg. Needs triangles.
posted by klangklangston at 7:24 PM on January 26, 2016

This Penrose Tiling Generator seems pretty good at keeping me from backing myself into a corner. Just sayin'.
posted by DaveP at 3:31 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

That Penrose tiling generator is nice! It has the Penrose constraints built in, which makes it impossible for you to back yourself into a corner but in exchange it's filling in the pattern for you. Penrose tiles are a highly constrained system. The Girih tiles are much more open ended, and now I'm wondering if the mathematics of the constraints are solved in the way Penrose tiles are. Probably so, and for all I know by someone speaking Arabic in the 9th century AD.
posted by Nelson at 7:13 AM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Love the Penrose. Thanks.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:16 AM on January 27, 2016