You can not only build the new packs, but also correct an existing pack. The
following actions over the pack are supported now:
- Dilation by a sphere.
This button perform dilation of some objects by a sphere
with the given radius r. What does mean "dilation by a sphere"?
- If an object is a sphere, dilation means merely adding r to the radius
of this sphere. If r > 0, the sphere is increased, else it is decreased.
- For more complex sphere-polyhedra (see "sphere-polyhedra kinds" parameter), dilation changes (by adding r)
the radius of a sphere that "rounds" edges of the sphere-polyhedron.
For example, a cube becomes a sphere-cube. Positive value of
the radius r makes objects more "round", negative value
makes them more "sharp".
Dilation by a sphere with positive r increases sizes of objects.
As a result, they begin to overlap each other usually (that is impossible
after normal packing procedure).
An interesting possible result of dilation can be creating new kinds of shpere-
polyhedron not listed in "used
sphere-polyhedron kinds". Examples:
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dilation of a prism |
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by a sphere with r > 0 produces a sphere-prism: |
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dilation of a sphere-square |
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by a sphere with r < 0 can produce a plane square: |
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If r < 0, it's possible that radius of the sphere (if an object
is a sphere) or of the "round-up" (if it is a "rounded"
sphere-polyhedron) becomes negative after adding r. In this case,
new radius is set to 0. For example, dilation of a sphere-cube by a sphere
with r = -1000.0 will produce a cube very like.
Dilation of a sphere by a sphere with negative rarius can reduce the
sphere until a point ("a sphere with zero radius"). "Dilation"
button does not remove such "zero
spheres" from the pack; they can be used as base objects for packing
new sphere-polyhedra, and can be converted back to usual spheres by
dilation with positive r.
This parameter describes what objects should be changed by the
"Dilation" button. Two syntaxes are possible here.
First, you can list here several colors, coded by characters, as for
Used colors parametes. Then all objects with these
colors will be dilated.
Second, you can specify a concrete integer index of some packed object;
then this object will be dilated only.
A radius r of the sphere that is used to perform dilation.