Any tips for pattern folding?

[Lalibila]

Guys, I'm at wits end with pattern folding. Been practicing for a couple weeks now and I don't seem to be making any improvement on the bootcamp exams. I tried the generator for it but this is even harder than the questions included in the practice exams!

I've looked around for older posts and people seem to find this section one of the easier ones compared to tfe and keyhole and I really don't see how. Am i missing something? I've been getting 11/15ish on tfe and keyhole but seem to always get 6/15 or even less sometimes on pattern folding.

If anyone can tell me how they tackled this section and for those who have taken the dat, did you find pattern folding easier than bootcamp? This last questions only to make myself feel better honestly.

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[Lolo390]

This may seem crazy and I don't know if it will work on the real exam... but it has worked for me on every single practice problem. So when you look at the answer choices there are always similarities and differences between multiple answer options...so lets say there are 3 options - A,B, C where one side (if shaded) is identical... most likely that will be the answer choice so I check with the real image if it makes sense.. if it does I eliminate D. Then I look between A, B, C and see if theres any similarities between those two. If A and C have 2 sides the same ill knock out B.. (checking the real image to see if that would make sense).. Now between A & C I really just try to find similarities between these option choices and the actual image.. Idk if that makes sense but i hope!

Now if they arent shaded... its really all about finding key shapes that are found both in the image and the answer choices.

 

[Kreinstein]

Guys, I'm at wits end with pattern folding. Been practicing for a couple weeks now and I don't seem to be making any improvement on the bootcamp exams. I tried the generator for it but this is even harder than the questions included in the practice exams!

I've looked around for older posts and people seem to find this section one of the easier ones compared to tfe and keyhole and I really don't see how. Am i missing something? I've been getting 11/15ish on tfe and keyhole but seem to always get 6/15 or even less sometimes on pattern folding.

If anyone can tell me how they tackled this section and for those who have taken the dat, did you find pattern folding easier than bootcamp? This last questions only to make myself feel better honestly.

If possible I start by finding the most obscure shape/face in the "question" and looking for it in the answers, that can sometimes help eliminate 1 or 2 or even give you the answer immediately. If not it comes down to recognizing the differences in the answer choices and comparing them to the "question". Like differences the orientation of colors or number of faces in some some instances. Picking a certain face to keep as a frame of reference can help a ton. Common sense but don't take the process of elimination for granted either. If you're able to eliminate 2 answers because you know for sure they're impossible, you just doubled your chances at guessing the right answer in a pinch.

I attached a question that isn't necessarily the hardest but I can show you the thought process I have when answering.
We can see from the "question" that the two-colored triangular face's dark side will meet with the dark rectangle of the one rectangular face perfectly, this quickly eliminates C.
We can also tell that the rectangular face split in half diagonally meets "dark-dark" with the triangular face up top, this gets rid of A and just like that we're pretty quickly down to differentiating between two answers, sometimes this is easy and other times really hard, but like I mentioned before worst case scenario we gave ourselves better odds if we have to guess.
Now between B and D. D's white triangular face is on the bottom, to replicate that with the "question" picture we have to rotate it 180deg, when you do it pay special attention to the two rectangular faces with dark rectangles. The one with its dark rectangle facing down after the rotation would need to be on the right hand side of the face with its rectangle pointing up. Meaning B is our answer.

As I'm sure you've seen the patterns thrown at us can vary a lot. In the example I attached every single answer choice had the same # and shape/size of faces we see in the "question", so we couldn't eliminate any quickly and had no choice but to compare all of the color orientations. Other questions can have really distinct faces that are clearly not represented in certain answer choices, I like to consider those freebies. I guess the real take home is that while there isn't a perfect method that works for every single possible pattern fold, there is a combination of strategies that will help you tackle this section. Keep practicing and you will undoubtedly feel them start to click.

Sorry if any of that didn't make the most sense, feel free to PM me if you ever need to I'd be more than happy to help. I'm studying now myself and feeling confident with PAT. Best of luck

 

[FeralisExtremum]

Guys, I'm at wits end with pattern folding. Been practicing for a couple weeks now and I don't seem to be making any improvement on the bootcamp exams. I tried the generator for it but this is even harder than the questions included in the practice exams!

I've looked around for older posts and people seem to find this section one of the easier ones compared to tfe and keyhole and I really don't see how. Am i missing something? I've been getting 11/15ish on tfe and keyhole but seem to always get 6/15 or even less sometimes on pattern folding.

If anyone can tell me how they tackled this section and for those who have taken the dat, did you find pattern folding easier than bootcamp? This last questions only to make myself feel better honestly.

What is your current approach to these types of problems? I would go over the answer explanations to Bootcamp's pattern folding (even the ones I got right) because there is a ton of useful information there with techniques to easily eliminate answer choices and approaches to make folding mentally a bit easier. That gave me a pretty good foundation for how to approach the section.

 

[Lalibila]

If possible I start by finding the most obscure shape/face in the "question" and looking for it in the answers, that can sometimes help eliminate 1 or 2 or even give you the answer immediately. If not it comes down to recognizing the differences in the answer choices and comparing them to the "question". Like differences the orientation of colors or number of faces in some some instances. Picking a certain face to keep as a frame of reference can help a ton. Common sense but don't take the process of elimination for granted either. If you're able to eliminate 2 answers because you know for sure they're impossible, you just doubled your chances at guessing the right answer in a pinch.

I attached a question that isn't necessarily the hardest but I can show you the thought process I have when answering.
We can see from the "question" that the two-colored triangular face's dark side will meet with the dark rectangle of the one rectangular face perfectly, this quickly eliminates C.
We can also tell that the rectangular face split in half diagonally meets "dark-dark" with the triangular face up top, this gets rid of A and just like that we're pretty quickly down to differentiating between two answers, sometimes this is easy and other times really hard, but like I mentioned before worst case scenario we gave ourselves better odds if we have to guess.
Now between B and D. D's white triangular face is on the bottom, to replicate that with the "question" picture we have to rotate it 180deg, when you do it pay special attention to the two rectangular faces with dark rectangles. The one with its dark rectangle facing down after the rotation would need to be on the right hand side of the face with its rectangle pointing up. Meaning B is our answer.

As I'm sure you've seen the patterns thrown at us can vary a lot. In the example I attached every single answer choice had the same # and shape/size of faces we see in the "question", so we couldn't eliminate any quickly and had no choice but to compare all of the color orientations. Other questions can have really distinct faces that are clearly not represented in certain answer choices, I like to consider those freebies. I guess the real take home is that while there isn't a perfect method that works for every single possible pattern fold, there is a combination of strategies that will help you tackle this section. Keep practicing and you will undoubtedly feel them start to click.

Sorry if any of that didn't make the most sense, feel free to PM me if you ever need to I'd be more than happy to help. I'm studying now myself and feeling confident with PAT. Best of luck

That made perfect sense! I'll be sure to apply some of these strategies while I continue to practice.

What is your current approach to these types of problems? I would go over the answer explanations to Bootcamp's pattern folding (even the ones I got right) because there is a ton of useful information there with techniques to easily eliminate answer choices and approaches to make folding mentally a bit easier. That gave me a pretty good foundation for how to approach the section.

The ones that really give me a hard time are the ones that involve rotating the image and connecting edges that aren't very obvious with crazy shapes. Like Kreinstein mentioned, I usually do well on the ones where you select for a unique shape and finding that shape in the answers. I've also tried to use patterns as reference points and trying to eliminate but that gets difficult at times when there are more than one identical pattern so figuring out which pattern represents what in the answers is tricky. I guess what I'm having the hardest time on is finding my reference point in some of the shapes.

I've been averaging 20ish so pattern foldings the only thing holding me back.

 

[Faefly]

The section is not easy. At least not fast enough for me yet. I am not that good with this section, but I see shading is much easier than that horrible thing called dice.
But I am getting there, or to be precise, I hope that I am getting there
The dice won't win.

 

[Kreinstein]

I understood everything you said up until this point 😕 I don't get this at all lol if you could explain it in another way that'd be great ?

I'll give it a shot! Looking at the "question", if we use the rectangular face connected to each triangle as a reference frame, folding it as is means the white triangle is clearly going to be the top face, right? However in answer choice D we can see the white triangle is the bottom face. For the "question" to be oriented the same way (using that same rectangular face connected to both triangles as a reference), after folding it would have to be turned upside down. When we rotate it 180degree, the face that is to the left (other white one with small black rectangle) of the reference face will end up on the right. Answer choice D wouldn't make sense then because the face to the right of what would be the reference face is a diagonally cut one. Sorry reading through that I realize it's only gonna get worse. My best advice if it doesn't make sense is to keep practicing and the ideas will start to click