Example Diagrams of Symmetry Groups
Introduction
The following Diagrams illustrate the structure of symmetry groups in the euclidean plane. For this the blend over from an example ornament to a corresponding structure diagram. The example ornaments all come from the 1910 book The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones. Originally I created these images for my Diploma Thesis.
The diagrams are available primarily in the vector image formats
PDF and SVG. They both tile a small rasterized version of the ornament
which is embedded into the image files, and overlay the diagram. For
this reason, the images require little storage memory and are still
available in a quality suitable for print. The different
sizes small
and large
therefore have little impact on
the file size. Instead they affect the dimensions of graphical
elements. The smaller images are well suited for two columns per page,
while the larger ones look better using the full page width.
Both file formats were generated from the same raw material using different programs. I suggest you don't try to convert between these formats yourself, as most programs will perform such a conversion by rasterizing the whole image. High resulution raster images can be created from the vector formats. This is probably easier from SVG, e.g. Inkscape can export bitmaps from SVG files.
The diagrams of symmetry groups displayed on and linkt to from this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License. So you must mention me, Martin von Gagern, as the author when you reuse these images, and you must also include a license notice. For additional rights and requirements please see the license deed, the full offical license text.
Rosette Groups
C1 | ![]() |
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C4 | ![]() |
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C6 | ![]() |
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D1 | ![]() |
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D4 | ![]() |
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D11 | ![]() |
Frieze Groups
11 | ![]() |
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1g | ![]() |
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1m | ![]() |
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12 | ![]() |
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m1 | ![]() |
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mg | ![]() |
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mm | ![]() |
Wallpaper Groups
p1 | ![]() |
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p2 | ![]() |
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pm | ![]() |
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pg | ![]() |
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cm | ![]() |
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pmm | ![]() |
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pmg | ![]() |
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pgg | ![]() |
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cmm | ![]() |
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p4 | ![]() |
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p4m | ![]() |
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p4g | ![]() |
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p3 | ![]() |
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p3m1 | ![]() |
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p31m | ![]() |
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p6 | ![]() |
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p6m | ![]() |