Zonotope

A zonotope is a polytope that is the Minkowski sum of a set of vectors. These vectors are called its generators.

A zonotope can also be defined in other terms:


 * a polytope that can be alternated
 * a polytope whose facets are all convex and have 180° rotational symmetry ("point symmetry")

Properties
The faces of a zonotope always have an even number of edges, and the facets of a zonotope are themselves zonotopes.

An n-dimensional zonotope can always be dissected into "primitive" zonotopes (which are n-parallelotopes, or the generalization of parallelepipeds to n dimensions).

2D (zonogons)
All polygons with point symmetry (that is, they have a symmetry that rotates them 180° about the center) are zonotopes, and all convex regular 2n-gons are zonotopes. These are usually found as the faces of higher-dimensional zonotopes.

3D (zonohedra)
Of the uniform polyhedra, the cube and the three omnitruncates (the truncated octahedron, truncated cuboctahedron, and truncated icosidodecahedron) are zonotopes.

Two of the uniform dual polyhedra - the rhombic dodecahedron and rhombic triacontahedron - are also zonotopes.

Removing one or two generators from the rhombic triacontahedron results in the rhombic icosahedron and Bilinski dodecahedron, respectively. Both are also zonotopes.

The prisms of 2D zonotopes are zonotopes as well.

4D (zonochora)
Of the uniform polychora, the tesseract, great prismatodecachoron, great disprismatotesseractihexadecachoron, truncated icositetrachoron, great prismatotetracontoctachoron, and great disprismatohexacosihecatonicosachoron are zonotopes.

Duoprisms of two 2n-gons are also zonotopes, as are the prisms of 3D zonotopes.

Zonohedrification
Zonohedrification is an operation upon a polytope (like truncation, the dual, or many others) that regards the vertices of the starting polytope as vectors (originating from the polytope's center), then uses those vectors to generate a zonotope. Parallel vectors are ignored, leaving only one in each direction.

Note that a polytope does not have to be a zonotope to be zonohedrified.