page_title: Zome
section_title: Zome as a modeling system
hierarchical_section_title: Zome / Zome as a modeling system
caption_attribution_description: English: Created by Elizabeth Schlapp using ZomeCAD version 0.5.6.
context_page_description: The term zome is used in several related senses. A zome in the original sense is a building using unusual geometries.
  The word "zome" was coined in 1968 by Steve Durkee, now known as Nooruddeen Durkee, combining the words dome and zonohedron. One of the earliest models ended up as a large climbing structure at the Lama Foundation. In the second sense as a learning tool or toy, "Zometool" refers to a model-construction toy manufactured by Zometool, Inc. It is sometimes thought of as the ultimate form of the "ball and stick" construction toy, in form. It appeals to adults as well as children, and is educational on many levels. Finally, the term "Zome system" refers to the mathematics underlying the physical construction system.
  Both the building and the learning tool are the brainchildren of inventor/designer Steve Baer, his wife, Holly, and associates.
context_section_description: The Zome system is especially good at modeling 1-dimensional skeleta of highly symmetric objects in 3- and 4-dimensional Euclidean space. The most prominent among these are the five Platonic solids, and the 4-dimensional polytopes related to the 120-cell and the 600-cell. However, the list of mathematical objects which are amenable to Zome is long, and an exhaustive list is not forthcoming. Besides those already mentioned, one may use Zome to model the following mathematical objects:
  Three of the four Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra
  Regular polyhedral compounds
  Regular 4-dimensional polytopes and some compounds
  Many stellations of the rhombic triacontahedron
  Many stellations of the regular icosahedron
  Zonohedra, especially the rhombic enneacontahedron and rhombic triacontahedron
  Hypercubes in dimensions 61 or fewer
  Most uniform polyhedra (a major exception being those formed using the snub operation)
  Many uniform 4-polytopes
  Thorold Gosset's exceptional semiregular polytopes in 6, 7, and 8 dimensions
  A few of the Johnson solids
  Desargues configuration
  Two of the Catalan solids
  Classical and exceptional root systems
  Triality (from Lie theory)
caption: Compound of five cubes, rendered in ZomeCAD
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