8 votes

Looking for advice on designing 3D printable board game inserts

Posted by belak
Tags: board games, ask.advice, printing.3d

Hello Tildes board gamers!

I got a 3D printer last year, and over the last few months, I've started printing organizers other people have designed from Printables and Thingiverse, especially for games with poor provided organization or lots of tokens and cards... however there are a number of games I have where people haven't designed a good organizer, or the ones which exist are lacking in some way (don't fit my boxes, missing boxes for expansions, only support all the expansions, etc)

Does anyone have tips on getting started with designing my own? I've got some very basic 3D modeling knowledge, but my primary strengths are as a programmer, so leveraging something like OpenSCAD would be ideal. I saw the boardgame insert toolkit, but it seems relatively basic - there are lots of convenience features I'd love to add as well (like curved walls for token holders to make it easier to get tokens out). Is that a good place to start, or should I look elsewhere?

Even just some ideas about tolerances and/or tips for how to size sections for cards would be super helpful.

3 comments

  1. Akir
    Link
    Honestly for simple thing like organizers, OpenSCAD is a pretty good tool; you can parameterize your designs and use its customizer functionality to make whatever variations you need. That being...

    Honestly for simple thing like organizers, OpenSCAD is a pretty good tool; you can parameterize your designs and use its customizer functionality to make whatever variations you need.

    That being said, modern commercial tools like Fusion 360 or Onshape are much easier to learn to use by non-coders and offer far more capabilities.

    Don't worry too much about tolerances; you'll learn quickly that you'll want to add extra space anyways to make things easier to get out. Do, however, make sure that you have some well-placed holes for gripping and to prevent accidental vacuums.

    4 votes
  2. skybrian
    Link
    I don't know about board game inserts, but when using a 3D printer, I expect to have to do multiple prints to get the tolerances right when they're tight. It's trial and error.

    I don't know about board game inserts, but when using a 3D printer, I expect to have to do multiple prints to get the tolerances right when they're tight. It's trial and error.

    1 vote
  3. zielperson
    Link
    You can look for "tolerance tests" on 3D printing sites. For example: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2473109 This will give you the numbers for your printer and config. I think printing it for...

    You can look for "tolerance tests" on 3D printing sites. For example:
    https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2473109

    This will give you the numbers for your printer and config.
    I think printing it for every new spool is overkill, but printing one for different materials (PET and PLA) and maybe different setups (detailed, rough)