Turtles for tessellations

We developed an approach to creating vector graphics representations of tessellations for purposes of teaching creative programming and laser cutting. The approach is based on turtle graphics. The lines of the turtle’s trail define the tiles of the tessellation. The turtle is defined in an object-oriented style and embedded in the Processing environment as a library. The library is called Oogway. It also facilitates embedding line segments made with different tools such as Illustrator. We present the basic idea, the library, several example and our experiences.