Concept
This table shows the 11 convex uniform tilings (regular and semiregular) of the Euclidean plane, and their dual tilings. There are three regular and eight semiregular tilings in the plane. The semiregular tilings form new tilings from their duals, each made from one type of irregular face. John Conway called these uniform duals Catalan tilings, in parallel to the Catalan solid polyhedra. Uniform tilings are listed by their vertex configuration, the sequence of faces that exist on each vertex. For example 4.8.8 means one square and two octagons on a vertex. These 11 uniform tilings have 32 different uniform colorings. A uniform coloring allows identical sided polygons at a vertex to be colored differently, while still maintaining vertex-uniformity and transformational congruence between vertices. (Note: Some of the tiling images shown below are not color-uniform) In addition to the 11 convex uniform tilings, there are also 14 known nonconvex tilings, using star polygons, and reverse orientation vertex configurations. A further 28 uniform tilings are known using apeirogons. If zigzags are also allowed, there are 23 more known uniform tilings and 10 more known families depending on a parameter: in 8 cases the parameter is continuous, and in the other 2 it is discrete. The set is not known to be complete. In the 1987 book, Tilings and Patterns, Branko Grünbaum calls the vertex-uniform tilings Archimedean, in parallel to the Archimedean solids. Their dual tilings are called Laves tilings in honor of crystallographer Fritz Laves. They're also called Shubnikov–Laves tilings after Aleksei Shubnikov. John Conway called the uniform duals Catalan tilings, in parallel to the Catalan solid polyhedra. The Laves tilings have vertices at the centers of the regular polygons, and edges connecting centers of regular polygons that share an edge. The tiles of the Laves tilings are called planigons. This includes the 3 regular tiles (triangle, square and hexagon) and 8 irregular ones. Each vertex has edges evenly spaced around it.
