The construction of an unbounded polyhedron from a jagged convex cap is described, and several of its properties discussed, including its relation to Alexandrovs limit angle.
We prove that every positively-weighted tree T can be realized as the cut locus C(x) of a point x on a convex polyhedron P, with T weights matching C(x) lengths. If T has n leaves, P has (in general) n+1 vertices. We show there are in fact a continuum of polyhedra P each realizing T for some x on P. Three main tools in the proof are properties of the star unfolding of P, Alexandrovs gluing theorem, and a cut-locus partition lemma. The construction of P from T is surprisingly simple.
An unzipping of a polyhedron P is a cut-path through its vertices that unfolds P to a non-overlapping shape in the plane. It is an open problem to decide if every convex P has an unzipping. Here we show that there are nearly flat convex caps that have no unzipping. A convex cap is a top portion of a convex polyhedron; it has a boundary, i.e., it is not closed by a base.
We extend the notion of a source unfolding of a convex polyhedron P to be based on a closed polygonal curve Q in a particular class rather than based on a point. The class requires that Q lives on a cone to both sides; it includes simple, closed quasigeodesics. Cutting a particular subset of the cut locus of Q (in P) leads to a non-overlapping unfolding of the polyhedron. This gives a new general method to unfold the surface of any convex polyhedron to a simple, planar polygon.
Given a convex polyhedral surface P, we define a tailoring as excising from P a simple polygonal domain that contains one vertex v, and whose boundary can be sutured closed to a new convex polyhedron via Alexandrovs Gluing Theorem. In particular, a digon-tailoring cuts off from P a digon containing v, a subset of P bounded by two equal-length geodesic segments that share endpoints, and can then zip closed. In the first part of this monograph, we primarily study properties of the tailoring operation on convex polyhedra. We show that P can be reshaped to any polyhedral convex surface Q a subset of conv(P) by a sequence of tailorings. This investigation uncovered previously unexplored topics, including a notion of unfolding of Q onto P--cutting up Q into pieces pasted non-overlapping onto P. In the second part of this monograph, we study vertex-merging processes on convex polyhedra (each vertex-merge being in a sense the reverse of a digon-tailoring), creating embeddings of P into enlarged surfaces. We aim to produce non-overlapping polyhedral and planar unfoldings, which led us to develop an apparently new theory of convex sets, and of minimal length enclosing polygons, on convex polyhedra. All our theorem proofs are constructive, implying polynomial-time algorithms.
Starting with the unsolved Durers problem of edge-unfolding a convex polyhedron to a net, we specialize and generalize (a) the types of cuts permitted, and (b) the polyhedra shapes, to highlight both advances established and which problems remain open.