Semiregular pentagonal subdivisions

Triangular and quadrilateral meshes are commonly used in computer graphics applications. We analyze the topological existence of meshes that consist of n-sided faces where n is greater than 4 such as pentagonal and hexagonal meshes. We show that it is possible to represent any 2-manifold with a mesh that is made up of only pentagons. We also show that the meshes that consist of only polygons with more than five sides cannot represent all 2-manifolds. We present a pentagonalization (or pentagonal conversion) scheme that can create a pentagonal mesh from any arbitrary mesh structure. We also introduce a pentagonal preservation scheme that can create a pentagonal mesh from any pentagonal mesh.