Tyler
Click around in the applet below to see how easy it is to create interesting tilings.
Please also visit the
Tyler Art Gallery
for ideas and to see some of what is possible to create. When you want to become
a power user, please scroll down and read the simple instructions below.
- Click to place polygon of current type. New polygon will be attached to unpaired edge closest to cursor.
- Shift-Click places a detached polygon at the cursor.
- Space bar creates another polygon of the same type as the last one.
- 'u' key undoes last polygon placement.
- 'd' key deletes polygon closest to the cursor.
- 'm' key moves last placed polygon to be closest to the cursor.
- 'e' key extrapolates one polygon following the pattern of the last one.
- '3' through '9' keys place polygons of the chosen type. (0, 1, 2 keys make 10, 11, & 12-gons)
- 'C' key cycles thickness of bounding circle when hyperbolic
- 'A' key toggles arc representation when hyperbolic (edges only, doesn't match polygon interiors yet)
- 'a' key toggles antialiasing (very slow)
- 'T' key opens a new Tyler window
- 'x','y','X','Y' keys snap closest tile, edge, or vertex to center of screen and closest neighbor to +x,+y,-x, or -y axis respectively
- Arrow keys move and then axis-align the tiling
- Ctrl-left-arrow and Ctrl-right-arrow rotate counterclockwise or clockwise to next axis-aligned orientation
This will get you an executable jar file which should run on any machine with java installed.
On Windows, just save it to your machine and then just double-click to launch.
On UNIX or other such obsolete platforms the command line "java -jar Tyler.jar" will likely work for you.
The stand-alone version includes additional functionality to save and load drawing files
so you can save your works-in-progress and edit them later.
The data file format is fairly simple and can be used to move polygonal data between applications.
If the program won't run, you probably do not have Java installed.
The simplest way to get Java is to get the Java RTE from Sun.
Simply download the Java RTE or JDK and install.
Afterwards double-clicking the jar file should launch the stand-alone Tyler program.
Written by Melinda Green and Don Hatch
Feel free to view the Java source code.
Another tiling applet allowing only uniform, complete tilings.
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