I found a version of the Mathematica spikey in 3D printable
format (STL) at the Shapeways site that was hollow. Here it is
when viewed in MeshLab: You can see there's a bit cut out of the
end, and the whole thing is obviously hollow, with a thick
shell. When I try to make a spikey myself, with code like this:
spikey = PolyhedronData["MathematicaPolyhedron"]
Export["spikey.stl", spikey] and look at the file in MeshLab,
it's solid, but if I look inside, it's obviously just a surface,
rather than a thick shell. You can see through to the inside of
the opposite faces. The file with a bite out of it was created
by the "Wolfram Team", so I'm pretty sure they used Mathematica.
But can this hollowing-out treatment be done using some
Mathematica code, or does it require the assembled brain-power
of the entire Wolfram organization, or some third-party
software, to make polyhedra hollow? The reason for hollowing out
polyhedra is that 3D printers charge per cubic centimeter of
material used, so hollow shapes are much che