It's my creation... is it real?

I know the last few posts have been boring to non-d&d players, and a bit exposition heavy.

In our d&d sessions, the group seemed to like the book base I printed for my miniature (which is funny because the character is obsessed with books and has a small library in her backpack, for buying/selling/trading.) My DM described a life counter style he would like to use for his monsters/mobs.

His request was to have three digits, and he sketched out his idea - which was basically a flat counter with three 0-9, all stacked on top of each other, so that 000-999 would be visible from the top view.

I found a couple interesting things on thingiverse, but nothing that works how I wanted, so I opened up SketchUp and designed a couple prototypes of my own.

My first design was a little cumbersome and blocky. I never printed anything to keep all the pieces together, so it was just a cup with three thing rings that had a small gap between them (for spinning ease.) But if you flip it over, the three rings fall out.

My second design was intended to print a topper piece that would snap into place, and hold the rings down. I also decided to make the rings more nested, with a thin disc on the bottom of each, with just a small hole in the very middle to stick on the spindle. I liked this idea more, but the snap on top didn't work very well.

My third design was base-free. Keep the nested pieces with the bottoms, and stuck a small spindle through, capping it with a snapon piece that has just an indication arrow. This is neat, but harder to change the numbers, because it makes some weird pressure points, causing numbers to spin out of turn.

My fourth design incorporated the base again, so there could be a clear line from side to side. (An arrow on the base and the center. I designed the center of the base to stick up through the disks and another snap on top to hold everything down and also line up with the outside arrow. Also, realizing how big these were coming out, and how large the battlefield in 4e is (25mm squares for each mini) I made the discs smaller.

I colored the numbers in with sharpies because I didn't want to mess around with swapping colors. The reaction at game night(Session 3) was mostly interested, but unenthusiastic. It got a look and then they got pushed to the side, unused for the evening. To be fair, they are just prototypes, and they are kind of huge, even the smallest one is 40mm diameter. The DM commented on their size, so my next prototype will be working towards functionality + small size/printer detail ability. On our next game night(Session 4), DM did whip them out and use, our battlefield was small and easy to put them to the side, corresponding with each monster.

Going forward, I am going to expand on my 4th design, making them thinner and maybe resize some of the spacing so it is easier to spin. Let's see if i can get 3 digits and a base within 25 mm.

Designing Cosmic Encounter insert part 3.

I think I figured some stuff out so that it will fit on the printer bed! Yay!

Sketchup: Cosmic Encounters

I have had some time to start review, revising and transcribing my designs from my clipboard of graph paper to Google Sketchup I am a little worried because I only have the base game, no expansions. I looked up the card pieces so that I could plan out how much empty space to leave for each card type (squeezing them in with sleeves, because you kooky boardgamers love sleeving your cards!) I actually had to use a mixture of boardgamegeek and the PDF copies of the rules that come with every expansion, as they give a perfect breakdown of all of the content included in each set.

In order to fit all the cards with sleeves from the base game + six expansions on my printer, I had to cut the biggest card section (for flare cards) into their own print. I can still fit them onto the printer side by side, just not length wise. I have one of the smaller printers, so hopefully it works for the folks on thingiverse.

I also design a large holder for the alien cards, based on ZekTheMad's large card holder on the Eldritch Horror project I printed earlier in the month.. I did all the measurements myself, just based on his.. I liked the look of the rounded slots.

With the expansions, two should be just perfect. they will fit in the box with some space to place the randomly sized cardboard pieces on top

I decided that the best way to store all 8 sets of player pieces would be to make a lipped box and store them on their side.  I need to print one of them and test it with the player pieces, since the inside is just enough to fit the round planets. The rest of the box should be good though, more than enough space to fit all the ships as well as those planets, if the planets fit.

In the remaining space, in the corner at the end of the cards, I designed a generic token tray with a lid. It should fit 2 trays on top of each other.

Now, this said - I have no flipping idea if this will be enough storage space for all of the tokens and extra cardboard cutouts that came with the expansions. I may test my prints on Nameless Roommate #1's copy, as he has all but one expansion. I feel that this will give me a good enough feeling for what will fit.

My next step is to print out the files (I am still just waiting on the some plastic, my shipment from push plastics is est. delivery date of 12-6 (omg, wtf, amazon has ruined me) So when a CamelCamelCamel alert came up for Dixit Quest, I added some cheap PLA to the order. It should be here today, so I just need to export my sketchup files to the right format(.stl), and prepare my bed for printing. Hopefully I will have some kind of picture of a printed item to show everyone tomorrow.

Cross your fingers!