Summary

The Bowtie is a novel space-filling solid. Sets of these pieces can be assembled into interesting shapes. The original design is by Robert Reid. I presented a paper on this, and the derivation of a whole class of new space-filling solids, at Gathering for Gardner 9.

Instructions

The Bowtie was invented by my friend Robert Reid. We wrote a paper about this, that I presented at Gathering For Gardner 9. The Bowtie is an example of a class of solid that fills space.

You can make a nice puzzle from a set of the 5Hcolumn3 file: print 9 in one colour, 6 in another colour, 4 in a final colour, and assemble them to make a cube as shown in the 1st picture above. Its not trivial to do as the pieces can go in in a couple of wrong orientations. George Miller might have been the first to suggest trying to do this in a closed box (I believe he made some of these for Robert a few years ago).

These pieces are easy to print on most printers. I would stand the pieces up on their end and use a raft to make them stable. There is a minor risk that a piece will get knocked over when you print, so I would suggest not printing too many at once.

Bowtie 5H - Construction Toy & Puzzle