Excel application
An Excel application has been developed to generate and verify muqarnas designs. It performs an in-depth 3D analysis of the structure of muqarnas and generates drawings, tables and statistics for any muqarnas. Input is a series of coded strings. The software interprets these strings using the geometrical definitions of a collection of muqarnas units. For the software, a muqarnas is a collection of strings of letters, where each letter represents a unit. The letters A to F have been chosen for the top row of units with rear wall and the letters G to L for the bottom row of intermediate units without rear wall. One of the aims is to identify for each unit its neighbours (left, right, above, and below) and to detect missing neighbours and other inconsistencies.
During my inquiries, I found out that I needed more, dedicated units for special purposes, for example at the end of a layer or in the middle of a layer to gain extra height. These new units are often half the size of a standard unit, but can also be something surprisingly new. These units are also coded. For example, the codes A1 and A2 represent the left and right half of the blue square building block that got the letter A. An example of a new building block is the flat wall, coded with the letter Z. The software accepts all triangular and quadrangular shapes.