Description
Crystalline structure is a fundamental property of materials. Each structure has been classified or decomposed into elements or blocks which can be combined to make the crystals found in nature. Some of those elements are known as crystallographic point groups, the set of symmetry operations that coexist while leaving a point fixed. In total, and with the restrictions of crystals, there are 32 crystallographic point groups; combined with the 14 Bravais Lattices and other translations, they make up the 230 space groups describing all material symmetries.
A Visualisation of Crystallographic Point Groups (NB)
Courtesy of Luca Montarelli.