One difficulty in reconstructing Old Babylonian geometric diagrams is that known tablets never include diagrams in solutions—even in geometric solutions where explicit constructions are described in text—although diagrams are often included in formulations of problems. Høyrup argues that the cut-and paste geometry would have been performed in some medium other than clay, perhaps in sand or on a "dust abacus", at least in the early stages of a scribe's training before mental facility with geometric calculation had been developed., pp. 285–287, pp. 95–97
