Do you visualize the icosahedron as one object or do you split it up and consider each separately, but reminding oneself that it is actually one object?
I have looked at a d20 long enough and from enough angles (it’s very symmetrical) to have memorized the whole icosahedron, and can visualize it that way, at least as an opaque object from the outside.
But the mnemonic technique of chunking is a valid strategy for visualization. Short-term memories must be “refreshed” or they fade away, but if you juggle too many at once, you’ll drop one before you can get back to it. Making each face a chunk would be 20, which is too many. 3-5 chunks is a more reasonable number. My favored decomposition of the icosahedron is into a pentagonal antiprism with pentagonal pyramid caps. That’s 3 chunks, and two of them are the same thing. Other decompositions may be useful depending on what you are trying to do.
More complex objects can be visualized as hierarchical decompositions, though not always in their entirety. Recognition is not the same as recall. The resolution of a weak visual memory may be just enough to recognize a new example (but too low to count the faces, say). A really low resolution image is more of a handle than a structure, but it can point you to the memory of the real thing.
I have looked at a d20 long enough and from enough angles (it’s very symmetrical) to have memorized the whole icosahedron, and can visualize it that way, at least as an opaque object from the outside.
But the mnemonic technique of chunking is a valid strategy for visualization. Short-term memories must be “refreshed” or they fade away, but if you juggle too many at once, you’ll drop one before you can get back to it. Making each face a chunk would be 20, which is too many. 3-5 chunks is a more reasonable number. My favored decomposition of the icosahedron is into a pentagonal antiprism with pentagonal pyramid caps. That’s 3 chunks, and two of them are the same thing. Other decompositions may be useful depending on what you are trying to do.
More complex objects can be visualized as hierarchical decompositions, though not always in their entirety. Recognition is not the same as recall. The resolution of a weak visual memory may be just enough to recognize a new example (but too low to count the faces, say). A really low resolution image is more of a handle than a structure, but it can point you to the memory of the real thing.