In geometry, a polytope (e.g. a polygon or polyhedron) or a tiling is isogonal or vertex-transitive if all its vertices are equivalent under the symmetries of the figure. This implies that each vertex is surrounded by the same kinds of face in the same or reverse order, and with the same angles between corresponding faces.
Technically, one says that for any two vertices there exists a symmetry of the polytope mapping the first isometrically onto the second. Other ways of saying this are that the group of automorphisms of the polytope acts transitively on its vertices, or that the vertices lie within a single symmetry orbit.
All vertices of a finite n-dimensional isogonal figure exist on an (n−1)-sphere.[1]
The term isogonal has long been used for polyhedra. Vertex-transitive is a synonym borrowed from modern ideas such as symmetry groups and graph theory.
The pseudorhombicuboctahedron – which is not isogonal – demonstrates that simply asserting that "all vertices look the same" is not as restrictive as the definition used here, which involves the group of isometries preserving the polyhedron or tiling.
An isogonal polyhedron and 2D tiling has a single kind of vertex. An isogonal polyhedron with all regular faces is also a uniform polyhedron and can be represented by a vertex configuration notation sequencing the faces around each vertex. Geometrically distorted variations of uniform polyhedra and tilings can also be given the vertex configuration.
Semi-regular if every face is a regular polygon but it is not isohedral (face-transitive) or isotoxal (edge-transitive). (Definition varies among authors; e.g. some exclude solids with dihedral symmetry, or nonconvex solids.)
Uniform if every face is a regular polygon, i.e. it is regular, quasiregular or semi-regular.
A polytope or tiling may be called k-isogonal if its vertices form k transitivity classes. A more restrictive term, k-uniform is defined as a k-isogonal figure constructed only from regular polygons. They can be represented visually with colors by different uniform colorings.
^Coxeter, The Densities of the Regular Polytopes II, p54-55, "hexagram" vertex figure of h{5/2,5}.
^The Lighter Side of Mathematics: Proceedings of the Eugène Strens Memorial Conference on Recreational Mathematics and its History, (1994), Metamorphoses of polygons, Branko Grünbaum, Figure 1. Parameter t=2.0
Peter R. Cromwell, Polyhedra, Cambridge University Press 1997, ISBN0-521-55432-2, p. 369 Transitivity