Dodecahedron pentagonal faces, with three meeting in each of the 20 vertices. However, the pentagons are not regular and the figure has no fivefold symmetry axes. Although regular dodecahedra do not exist in crystals, the tetartoid form does. The name tetartoid comes from the Greek root for one-fourth because it has one fourth of full octahedral symmetry, and half of pyritohedral symmetry. The mineral cobaltite can have this symmetry form. Its topology can be as a cube with square faces bisected into 2 rectangles like the pyritohedron, and then the bisection lines are slanted retaining 3-fold rotation at the 8 corners.
Rhombic dodecahedron vectors are: "u"=(1,1,-1,-1), "v"=(-1,1,-1,1), "w"=(1,-1,-1,1). The rhombic dodecahedron forms the maximal cross-section of a 24-cell, and also forms the hull of its vertex-first parallel projection into three dimensions. The rhombic dodecahedron can be decomposed into six congruent (but non-regular) square dipyramids meeting at a single vertex in the center; these form the images of six pairs of the 24-cell's octahedral cells. The remaining 12 octahedral cells project onto the faces of the rhombic dodecahedron. The non-regularity of these images are due to projective distortion; the facets of the 24-cell are regular octahedra in 4-space. This decomposition gives an interesting method