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!

If it Fits, I prints

A quick write up of my experience with printing the Eldritch Horror insert. Two of the larger pieces didn't fit. (sad face)  I covered this a bit in the last post, but I thought I would include more images.

Here I have a screenshot of my Cura(splicing software that sends prints to printer) and one of the two pieces that was too big for my printer. The blue checked area is representative of the area my printer can handle. When an item will not fit on the printer, it turns gray. As you can see in the above image, this image overhangs, but only on one axis, which is pretty easy to fix.

I imported the .STL file into Google Sketchup and cut the last compartment off the storage unit. As you can see below, the newly sliced piece fits both pieces on the bed, so I was still able to print it all at once.

After I printed the two smaller pieces, I used tacky glue to connect them!  It's not 100% aesthetically pleasing, but it works, and the glue is actually strong enough to pick it up by either side and it will not fall apart.

Programmed to be Wild Part 1: Intro to Design

I often open up my programs and don't even think twice about how they help me make my printer work. The recreational 3d printing community is a cool crowd. They are really supportive, and like many in this new generation, they are all about open information. Hiding information behind paywalls is a thing of the past. The information is all out there for us to learn, you just have to know where to look, or how to look. In that spirit, there are many free or open source programs out on the web for the many stages of 3d printing. The main stages for me are design and printing.

For design, I usually use Google's Sketchup, because it is simple and best of all - they have a great free version. It's easy to teach yourself: there are all kinds of free resources out there - like Youtube... If you have any aptitude for software, it's remarkably intuitive. I use this to design or try to make edits to other people's designs. Most of my designs are very loose prototypes with the two neatest ones being a deck box for Magic: The gathering, and storage bins for Ticket to Ride, neither printed or tested yet.

For finding files to print that I don't have to design myself, there are a ton of links. The majority of my prints, so far, have come from makerbot's Thingiverse. I have only posted a couple pictures of prints - the polite etiquette is this: If you use a free file, upload a picture/rating/comments to let the maker and other users know how it worked out. The best thing is that sometimes the prints don't work right on certain machines, or some users don't know how to edit the files to work, so people with the skills will create "remixes" that will work as intended. I have used the remixes of a few files - the Voronoi elephant, for instance, originally had rounded feet and trunk, but the remixer flattened them so it will stand up properly - most important for printing.

Though a quick google search can tell you that there is no shortage of sites with free/open source .stl files (the files my printing software uses), I thought a quick round up of honorable mentions would be nice.
Pinshape has a lot of duplicate stuff that I have seen on Thingiverse.
My Mini Factory has a ton of cool fan art, jewelry, scans of sculptures from the real world. Categories such as Accessibility, Fan Art, Props and Cosplay, and Scan the World. I could definitely get lost looking at all the neat files they have. Not many Board game Organizers
YouMagine has some standard stl files, a few board game organizers - but you have to look for the right terms. Fashion, Toys, the standard 3d garb that on the big sites.
The Guys at 3d Printing For Beginners have compiled a pretty decent list of 3d model repositories, if you are looking for some good resources.