ways to design other than box pleating and how to do them

[GWB origami]

hi, i'm looking to design in ways other than box pleating and am wondering what ways you guys use and how you do them. i'd like to learn circle packing and 22.5 degree.

[Baltorigamist]

Just use molecules, i.e., squares/rectangles and equilateral/isoceles triangles. It takes practice to get used to it, and reference points are a pain to find, but it pays off.

[Joe the white]

The easiest way to learn circle packing is probably through the program TreeMaker if you don't have "Origami Design Secrets". It has tutorials that are easy to use and learn the basics of the program and walks you through some basic Trees (reading the manual is important).

Circle packing is actually the older style of design, only now using modern methods. At first we had simple bases such as the fish, bird, frog, etc. As time progressed they added blintzed versions of these bases or made them off from the center of the paper. With tree theory we can now make bases in a variety of ways, but they still feature folds similar to the original ones, called molecules (If you folded a bird base and divided it diagonally into to 4 triangles, you'd get 4 rabbit ear molecules, and if you folded a blintzed frog base and divided it into 4 squares, it would have 4 bird base molecules). At least, that is my understanding of circle packing design.

Perhaps if you work with off-set bases or blintzed bases it would give you a better understanding of the basic theories, but ODS can explain the whole thing better than I could.

[cowburger13]

The easiest way to learn circle packing is probably through the program TreeMaker if you don't have "Origami Design Secrets".

I disagree... While treemaker shows you how circle packing works, the bases it gives you require you to measure tons of points and can drive the folder crazy. Tiling is a good solution, because it gives you elegant 22.5 degree bases (It's what Kamiya uses), but Iv'e had little experience with it, and am still learning.

[Baltorigamist]

Brian Chan has used tiling to pretty good effect, and I've experimented with it a little. It can be really confusing at first, and it takes a lot of math to find reference points (That's why I haven't done anything major yet with it.).
Of course, there's also the possibility of astructural design--i.e., that of a model without a given structure. (See my own Rabbit on DA for an example. It utilizes some circle packing, but the majority is improvised.

[phillipcurl]

I've never heard of tiling, but there are tons of different pleating methods... hexagon, octagon, etc. then you have the different symmetry other than 22.5, such as 30, 60, 11, and 15 (some of the most common) but most of those are a pain.

[Joe the white]

I disagree... While treemaker shows you how circle packing works, the bases it gives you require you to measure tons of points and can drive the folder crazy.

There is always referencefinder, but the most useful part of TreeMaker (for me) is to give you the basis to work your design from and to see the theory in action. Lang's Elk and Varileg Scorpion are quite foldable despite being almost pure TreeMaker designs, but for the most part he revises these types of designs (my guess would be mainly by tweaking proportions of flap lengths so they don't end up at hard to reach divisions). Personally I mostly use the stick figure method and try to apply it to a base with experimentation vs the more technical methods.