pattern folding

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don't try to actually visualize completely folding the entire pattern in your head. that's a pretty sophisticated thing to try to learn if it doesn't come naturally to you. instead, you're much better off eliminating the wrong answers one by one:

1. look for faces that don't exist in the original pattern. this could include faces that you could only get by folding the WRONG way, out of the page instead of into it. it could also include faces that are shaded the wrong way, i.e. the triangle is the right shape and orientation, but in the pattern the right angle corner is shaded and in the answer one of the other corners is shaded, etc.

2. for the 2-3 that you can't eliminate that way, focus on the main, center face in each answer. find the corresponding face in the original pattern and match everything up edge by edge.
 
In high school I took a bunch of graphic design courses and we had to learn how to design sophisticated boxes. I did well on shape folding because I spent much time disassembling boxes and folding them back up. It might help you to spend some time taking apart boxes and looking at the relationships between a flattened unfolded box and the box those parts will fold into.
 
In high school I took a bunch of graphic design courses and we had to learn how to design sophisticated boxes. I did well on shape folding because I spent much time disassembling boxes and folding them back up. It might help you to spend some time taking apart boxes and looking at the relationships between a flattened unfolded box and the box those parts will fold into.

exactly. that's the kind of practice it takes to be able to hit this section in the "purest" way, without any tricks, but just visualizing folding the entire pattern in your head.
 
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