Surface Area of 3D Shapes - Solution & Explanation

This approach involves calculating the total surface area by starting from the maximum theoretical surface area (each cube contributing six sides) and subtracting the overlapping sides between adjacent cubes.

1. Initialize the surface area as 0.
2. Iterate through each position in the grid:
• For each cell, add the surface area contributions of top and bottom faces.
• For the side faces, subtract the area shared with adjacent cubes in the grid (up, down, left, right).
3. Return the computed surface area.

This C solution iterates through each cell in the grid. For each cube, it accounts for all six sides and subtracts the shared face between adjacent cubes. The use of fmin ensures we only subtract surface area up to the height of the shorter stack.

This approach focuses on iterating through the grid and calculating surface additions by examining each pair of adjacent cells directly.

• For each cell, compute initial assumption of no adjacent pipes.
• Subtract common faces for vertical and horizontal neighbors.

This C solution calculates the surface area while accounting for shared walls between directly adjacent stacks of cubes. It inherently ensures overlap is addressed during iteration.