# Where can I find a good interactive polyhedron animation tool?

I'm planning to talk about symmetry groups of regular polyhedra in a class. I'd like to find a decent computer animation of polyhedra, which would ideally not just allow me to spin a picture of one around, but also make it easy to visualize the axis of rotation of symmetries, and/or to mark certain subsets of a regular polyhedron (e.g., for explaining how the symmetry group of the icosahedron is a subgroup of $S_5$).

Does anyone know any good resources?

• You might have more luck asking this question over at the mathematics educators SE: matheducators.stackexchange.com – emma Aug 16 '17 at 19:34
• I had no idea there was such a place – Charles Rezk Aug 16 '17 at 19:35

This is fairly easy to do in Maple, once you learn how to use it. For example:

with(geom3d):
TruncatedIcosahedron(t, point(o,0,0,0),1):
draw(t, viewpoint="circleleft",lightmodel=light3);

Or Mathematica:

PolyhedronData["GyroelongatedPentagonalBicupola"]

and related figures:

PolyhedronData["GyroelongatedPentagonalBicupola", "NetImage"]