On the Connection Between the Projection and the Extension of a Parallelotope

This paper presents a result concerning the connection between the parallel projection P _v,H of a parallelotope P along the direction v (into a transversal hyperplane H) and the extension P + S(v), meaning the Minkowski sum of P and the segment S(v) = {λv | −1 ≤ λ ≤ 1}. A sublattice L _v of the lattice of translations of P associated to the direction v is defined. It is proved that the extension P + S(v) is a parallelotope if and only if the parallel projection P _v,H is a parallelotope with respect to the lattice of translations L _v,H , which is the projection of the lattice L _v along the direction v into the hyperplane H.