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Boxes.py

Cut out boxes and other stuff with a laser cutter

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An (Online) Box Generator for laser cutters.

  • Boxespy is an online box generator
  • Boxespy is an Inkscape plug-in
  • Boxespy is library to write your own
  • Boxespy is free software licensed under GPL v3+
  • Boxespy is written in Python 3

Boxespy comes with a growing set of ready-to-use, fully parametrized generators. See https://florianfesti.github.io/boxes/html/generators.html for the full list.

Features

Of course the library and the generators allow selecting the "thickness"
of the material used and automatically adjusts lengths and width of
joining fingers and other elements.

The "burn" parameter compensates for the material removed by the laser. This
allows fine tuning the gaps between joins up to the point where plywood
can be press fitted even without any glue.


Finger Joints are the work horse of the library. They allow edges
and T connections. Their size is scaled up with the material
"thickness" to maintain the same appearance. The library also allows
putting holes and slots for screws (bed bolts) into finger joints,
although this is currently not supported for the available generators.

Dovetail joints can be used to join pieces in the same plane.

Flex allows bending and stretching the material in one direction. This
is used for rounded edges and living hinges.

Documentation

https://florianfesti.github.io/boxes/html/index.html

  • Personal Backlog

    Florian Festi03/08/2023 at 23:13 1 comment

    Being able to put more time into the project have I looked into my local repository and it is full of half finished projects - most of them new "box" generators. I have been working on getting some of them in shape for inclusion. Additionally there where a few needs that popped up that also needed instant addressing. Funny enough a lot of these new generators come in pairs.

    So I did a roll holder for the kitchen after the old, 3D printed one broke:

    Well, it is mounted to the wall... so a "Wall" variant was needed:

    After finishing both I found another 20% finished holder in my working dir. It is more ambitious with 3 layers on each side that allow locking in the axle by rotating the middle layer. No idea why that didn't get finished. May be one day the two above get a fancy sibling...

    For another project I need to 3D print a small part (yes, I know, heresy) but the filament didn't come with it's own spool. So, I did a spool that can be separated into two parts using the BayonetBox as a basis: 

    And as I was at it it was just too easy not the strip it down to a one piece spool (and then add some fancy reinforcements):


    One generator I started a long time ago was one for generating Tetris blocks. At the time this wasn't that easy and quite a bit of work. Nowadays this is much easier as we have the polygonWall method that gets a list of lengths and angles and handles the rest. There also is a companion method to create all the side walls from the same list. So the only tricky part was getting the lengths right as we do want the walls to be within the perimeter of the block structure. I am optimistic they fit, but I have not yet cut them out. So if you feel adventurous and "need some Tetris blocks in your life" please donate a few good pictures.

    Another "thing" that I started long ago and started over with more than once is my Seven Segments feature. The idea is to use a LED stripe on its side and wind it through the seven segments. So you can create a seven segment display without much soldering or special circuit boards and from semi small to quite big. The obvious use case is a seven segment clock. Both of them are still flagged "unstable". But I am not sure if I get to build one any time soon. So if one brave soul is looking an LED stripe fueled clock project let me know.


    So far my backlog is all but empty and I still have more ideas. I just started with a wire straightener holding two rows of v-groove ball bearings. I have a cryptic font that is mostly finished with each letter is just a few shapes that are only legible when surrounded by a border. I wanted to create a calendar with them, preferably perpetual or even some clever mechanical one. I saw a cube box at the Fablab of the University of Oulu that is cut directly between pieces without creating gaps. And I have a half working one for arbitrary sizes.  I have toyed a bit with flexures and thought about doing a laser cut microscope like the OpenFlexure Microscope although with very different kinematic. And I have a dozen more that are not much more than the first few lines of code and I am not confident enough to publicly admit here.

  • Old News and New News

    Florian Festi02/17/2023 at 10:43 0 comments

    It's been a while since the last proper log entry...

    The last few years were not that great for many things - including Boxes.py. But even with things going slow or not moving anywhere for months a lot of changes have piled up over this long time. Also it looks like this year is a lot better and things have actually already picked up speed in December of last year. Not only have I been able to do more but several old and new contributors have shown up and gave the project a very notable boost. To deal with the long backlog of new features and box generators while there is so much new stuff coming in I decide to mix in the old with the new.

    Wall Mounted Boxes and Tool Holders

    After a brief discussion here in the comments in early 2022 I factored and renamed the SlatWall group to WallMounted. While slat walls are fancy not many people have them. The whole group is only there because a few panels fell into the hands of our hacker space. Now the generators can have different styles of hooks and also work with DIN rails or French Cleats. It is relatively easy to add new ways of hooking the boxes and tool holders to different things. So it you have ideas open a ticket on GitHub - or start a discussion in the comments below.

    There are also few new generators in this group:

    • SlatWallPinRow allows you to hang stuff on the wall.
    • WallStairs allows you to design your own tool holders.

    and I recently added a few more sample images.

    On the search for the right box generator

    Caleb Crome is one of our new and very prolific contributors. One theme of his work is making finding the right box generator easier. He wrote a Gallery page that shows all sample images side by side for a quick overview.

    The second, complementary new feature is a search field on the menu page. It shows all matching box generators and matches the English name but also the translated name and short description. This is all done with some - not even too complicated - Java Script magic directly in the browser.

    A third feature is not merged yet. It will allow getting or adding QR codes with a link and settings of a generated box. That way it is easier to pass the settings around with a mobile phone or to figure out how to get the drawing from an already laser cut piece.

    These new features are not all Caleb has done so far. Prepare to hear more from him as soon as we get into new generators.

  • Server Health Improvements

    Florian Festi01/09/2023 at 15:35 0 comments

    The last few months complaints about poor performance and an increasing number of 502 errors have been piling up. The later were especially puzzling as it means there is a problem in the communication between the web server and uwsgi instance in the container. While there was some load on the machine everything looked fine at the first glance and there was nothing in the logs that hinted at a bug.

    At the same time there were similar complaints for the web2py application that runs on the same machine. Well, actually this thing is a VM that runs on a server of a friend of a friend that does a few other things and is only maintained to the bare necessity. When I put Boxes.py there the question I asked myself was not "How do I host the greatest box generator on the internet?" but "Now that I hacked argparse to produce web pages how can I show this to a few people?"

    Over the holidays I had time to look a bit deeper. Turns out the web2py app offers the data with different sorting and filtering and a horde of web crawlers eating it all up. Adding a robots.txt got rid of them and dropped the load from 0.7 to below 0.1. I may loosening this up a bit in the future but for now I just banned bots completely - including from Boxes.py.

    Looking at the logs from Boxes.py it was very apparent that there are even more connections coming in. Most of them of course are these nice pop-up images in the menu. While I still didn't have access the the main machine it dawned on me that the Boxes.py instance probably gets throttled down due to too many request. This would create timeouts and though the 502 errors. To fix that I moved all the pictures to the GH (documentation) pages and adjusted the links to point there. As this would be very annoying for people that run Boxes.py locally (me) this change affects the wsgi mode only. Yes, the boxesserver should grow a config file for things like that but I just couldn't be bothered.

    So performance has notably improved and I hope you all can now create your boxes without seeing 502 error messages. Looking into the access log it turns out there are quite  a lot of you. There are tens of thousands of request per day - even with the pictures moved elsewhere. This is kinda cool but also kinda scary...

  • It's all Fun and Games...

    Florian Festi10/23/2020 at 17:29 0 comments

    ...until someone makes an insert for Agricola - then it is even more fun ... and even more games:

    Kudos to Guillaume Collic who wrote this master piece. I especially like how he made use of already existing code and pieces and combines them with new edges types and new ideas. It re-uses the Divider Tray and regular boxes but combines them with new solutions like cutouts to make gripping the tiles easier. A very neat idea (but a bit difficult to see in the picture) are the sliding dividers in the trays for the wooden pieces. They are prevented from tumbling around by small triangular feet but are otherwise free to move left and right depending on how much space is needed in the compartments.

    The two box types holding the tiles clearly deserve to get a generator on their own. Guillaume already has ticket opened to make it easier to re-use complete generators by others. Splitting these boxes out might be a good exercise to create the infrastructure still missing.

    If you are on your way to your laser cutter you should probably stick to the default material thickness of 3mm or something close. While not stated in the generator description I have the suspicion that adding too much width with thicker material might end up with an insert that cannot be - well - inserted into the box.

    Inserts and organizers for board games is a very welcome new topic in the Boxes.py. I hope at some point we can make this a category in the UI and rescue this gem from the "Misc" section. I have the hope that Guillaume may contribute some more. But may his works also inspires others. The more pieces and features there already are the easier such task becomes. 

  • New Boxes For Your Electronics Projects

    Florian Festi05/21/2020 at 12:32 0 comments

    Often just a generic box is just not enough, but you need something that can house the electronics of your project. The ElectronicsBox was the first variant with this in mind. But in the end it is just a box meant to be bolted down and screwed shut:

    QuitButton needed something else: A housing with a slanted front to mount a LCDisplay and a few buttons.

    As a first stop gap solution (other than just turning a pentagon box on it's side) I implemented Console using the relatively new polygonWall() code that turns a list of lengths and angles into a side wall. The actual win here is that there is a .polygonWalls() method that is rendering all the walls between the sides. The result is still a bit simple, but  at least has the right shape:

    But as with a lot of other boxes there is a severe lack of lockable doors or hatches. And while non rectangular finger joints are cool they are rather distracting around the front panel.

    So here is an improved Console2:

    There are a few variants. You can choose with or without removable back wall, with or without removable front panel and the front panel - as seen here -  clean and glued or attached with finger joints on the sides.

    The panel is held in place by spring loaded tabs:

    The two tabs per side and both springs being one single, laser cut piece.

    The back wall is hooked in at the bottom and has two flush latches at the top:

    The latches are made small enough that they cannot be opened or closed by hand but need a small tool like a screwdriver. This is on purpose to avoid people accidentally sticking their fingers into the electric parts inside. To prevent the latches from opening they have an integral leaf spring and a very small recess that locks them in place when closed. This way they can only be re-opened when pressed in a little bit against the spring.

  • Boxes.py on heise.de

    Florian Festi05/20/2020 at 19:48 2 comments

    Heise.de is the German speaking IT news site. The Heise publishing house also issues the Make magazine. So via the Make news feed this article in German (translated by Google) made it to get global feed at heise.de.

    There is nothing in the article regular readers of this project log don't already know about. But getting this level of exposure is quite nice and made my day.

    Herzlich Willkommen an alle Heise-Leser!

  • New Back End

    Florian Festi05/20/2020 at 08:23 0 comments

    So the new back end is finally merged into the master branch. If you update your own installation you need to install the affine Python module which is available both via pip but also in most distributions. Cairo is no longer needed. This should make installation on Windows much easier.

    The SVG produce by the new back end is also much better than the old one. Artifacts like repeated moves are filtered out and the outline of parts is much more continuous. The weird inverted arcs in inner corners are - for the most part - replaced with smooth Bezier loops. This should reduce acceleration in the corners and allow for faster cutting.

    I am still pondering whether it is worth adding a native DXF back end. While there is only very few commands needed by Boxes.py the format does not look like fun. I am also scared that it won't support the text the way we might need. For now the output still uses pstoedit for converting to DXF.

  • Test new Python backend!

    Florian Festi04/06/2020 at 10:06 0 comments

    Boxes.py is using the Cairo graphics library to generate SVG and PostScript (which is then converted to more formats with pstoedit). This has always been a pain. There is little control over the actual output. Getting the library to run on Windows is a real pain and creates a continuous stream of tickets, questions and complaints.

    So there has always been the thought of replacing Cairo with something else. But thoka finally put in the work to put together a native Python backend. After me not finding the time to take care of the PR for much too long it is now ready to be tested. Please check out https://www.festi.info/boxes.nocairo/

    Beside not needing Cairo it has the following improvements:

    • Continues outlines for most parts
    • Better grouping within the SVG file
    • Improved burn correction with inner corners now being a loop instead of changing direction twice

    Other changes

    • Text rendered as text not as glyphs
    • <deleted>No use of hlines and vlines (yet)</deleted>

    Please test with you tool chain and report issue back. Either here as comments or in the GitHub PR or a new ticket.

    If you want to test locally there is a nocairo branch in the main repository.

    Thank you!

    Update:

    Turns out I had to redo the text "rendering". The text was never that well thought out as Boxes.py is not a word processor. I now do know much more about PostScript and it's font system than I ever wanted...

    To give the code more exposure I now moved the main instance (https://www.festi.info/boxes.py/) to the nocairo branch. The Cairo back end is still available at https://www.festi.info/boxes.cairo/ . But I expect to call the new back end final and ditch Cairo completely soon - if there are no major issues popping up. 

  • A Boxes.py story

    Florian Festi03/01/2020 at 12:06 0 comments

    Looking at tickets on GitHub is not always fun. They are full of bugs and missing features people stumbled across and ideas that are not bad enough to ignore but not good enough to work on right away.

    But from time to time there are stories that unfold in there that are too good to be forgotten in a closed ticket. So I am putting this one here:

    In the beginning there is a need for a box - a cash box. And there is an idea how it should look like:

    And there even are some plans - although not quite in the right size:

    So the question arises if there is a generator that can already do this. Well, sort of. There is the RoundedBox and it probably can be extended to get similar results.

    But as so often that's a bit too involved for a mere mortal. So Inkscape is called to the rescue instead:

    with green being from boxes.py, the red added to get the results in blue.

    And the final box is looking gorgeous:

    That's just to good be stay a one-off. Actually extending the RoundedBox wasn't that hard. Half of the patch is just increasing the opening on top/front for the new style. Of course the real work is done in the parts (RoundedPlate and SurroundingWall) that make up the box and need to learn about the new feature. So this could have been a nice show case how easy it is to extend the library. Unfortunately these parts are both pretty old and only used at few places. So there is a bit of refactoring and a few tweaks and bug fixes needed to make this all work eventually:

    The keen observer may have noticed that the edge type of the SurroundingWall has changed from "F" to "f" making the top and bottom a bit more sturdy as the corner holes don't continue into the sides. Otherwise this is very close to the Inkscape version.

    Thanks to bwente for the work and inspiration to finally do this!

  • Spicy

    Florian Festi12/16/2019 at 22:45 2 comments

    The kitchen in our hacker space needed a better solution for its spices. The wire frame shelf was disorganized and just not that great over all. Turns out you can get some nice tin cans for spices for just like 70ct each - already coated in black paint that can easily be laser-etched away. Now we just needed a new kind of rack that holds a lot of them. The obvious solution would be tilting them so you can read what's on the lid and each can be accessed directly. I was already thinking about a variant of the wine rack just with each cell tilted upward. But then there was a better idea: Have the cans sink into a horizontal plate:

    Although the rack is made specifically for the black cans it turns out other more or less cylindrical objects of more or less the same size also fit in well enough.

    While getting the math right and creating the ellipse arcs was a bit tricky the rack itself is easy to assemble:


    The generator can be found in the Shelves section.

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Discussions

Steph wrote 11/27/2020 at 10:21 point

  Are you sure? yes | no

Sergey wrote 08/17/2020 at 17:51 point

Good day! Sorry in advance for my English! I would like to improve box generator but I don't know a damn thing about Python programming. I have a small drawing of the spike groove connection that will fit most. It allows you to assemble layouts without glue. I would like to send such a drawing in pdf or ai or cdr format. However, I do not understand where I can put the information. I will be grateful if you help me, let me know by email or in this topic, where to put the drawing. ( my e-mail:   grelka@list.ru)

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Florian Festi wrote 08/18/2020 at 16:45 point

Best way of contributing ideas is creating an issue at the GitHub project: https://github.com/florianfesti/boxes/issues

But if creating a GitHub account is too cumbersome you can also mail it directly to me: florian@festi.info

  Are you sure? yes | no

dougw wrote 07/19/2020 at 04:25 point

2 comments on the new console box.

1) There is no way to select outside diameter, even though the dimensions all say "unless outside selected"

2) Selecting 0 for hi, which appears to be explicitly allowable ("leave to zero for same as outer walls)" results in a lengths of tabs/pins with zero connection width.  If this piece is ignored (which it must be since it cannot be cut), the resulting pieces will not mate together correctly.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 07/23/2020 at 14:24 point

Added outside param to both Console and Console2. Renamed hi to front_height to match Console2 and get rid of wrong description text. Finally fixed case where it is zero.

Thanks for pointing this out. With some box generators I run out of steam before having polished all dark corners.

  Are you sure? yes | no

dougw wrote 07/25/2020 at 22:47 point

thanks, those updates look correct. They may have added another problem, though. If you create a console with the default settings, the second and fourth narrow rectangular pieces have extra line segments in the upper and lower right on the second piece, and upper and lower left on the fourth piece. These should just be cosmetic since they’d extend into the waste material, but it might be indicative of something else. 

  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 07/27/2020 at 11:59 point

Those extending lines are kinda intentional. The non 90° finger joints protrude into the area of the walls. Those over extending lines are the top and bottom borders. To keep them independent from the left and right edges I keep them protruding and back up a bit for the finger joints in that case.

  Are you sure? yes | no

John Hildebrand wrote 07/04/2020 at 13:50 point

I use this project a lot and love it. However I have one request.

Tl;dr I’d like to be able to define the size of fingers in the divider tray generator.

I use these templates on my cricut and cut them out in chipboard. The results are great. The one generator that I wish I could update would be the divider tray. When it generates its result the finger for the sides are really small, way smaller than necessary. So, I end up generating what I need from that one and then a universal box where I can make the fingers and sockets larger and welding them in Inkscape. I would like to avoid his step and just have one svg to work from.

Would it be possible to add the ability to change the fingers for the divider tray like one can do in the universal box generator?

Thanks in advance 

John

  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 07/08/2020 at 22:26 point

Yes, the DividerTray misses a few bells and whistles that some other boxes have. I added the FingerJointSettings for now. May be I should add a way to select the bottom edge, too. But this should help you out for now.

  Are you sure? yes | no

John Hildebrand wrote 07/10/2020 at 02:46 point

yes! Thank you!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 07/08/2020 at 22:28 point

Yes, the DividerTray misses a few bells and whistles that some other boxes have. I added the FingerJointSettings for now. May be I should add a way to select the bottom edge, too. But this should help you out for now.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Holm wrote 05/20/2020 at 16:48 point

Hi Developer Team, first of all thanks for all nice work done. I have noticed another issue with the Divider Tray. When finished cutting the pieces, I noticed, that the middle separator (in a two row design doesn't match the bottom holes. I saw in earlier comments, that this is a relatively new implementation.

Generation parameters:

https://www.festi.info/boxes.py/DividerTray?sx=26*2&sy=20%3A10%3A10%3A10%3A10%3A10%3A10%3A10%3A10%3A10%3A10%3A20&h=32&outside=0&slot_depth=16&slot_angle=30&slot_radius=2&slot_extra_slack=0.2÷r_bottom_margin=1÷r_upper_notch_radius=1÷r_lower_notch_radius=8÷r_notch_depth=15&left_wall=0&left_wall=1&right_wall=0&right_wall=1&bottom=0&bottom=1&thickness=3.0&format=svg&tabs=0.0&debug=0&reference=100&burn=0.1&render=1

  Are you sure? yes | no

b.heijenga wrote 03/14/2020 at 20:41 point

After installation in inkscape (  on linux) with the script boxes2inkcape  I can see al lthe boxes in the dropdownmenu extensions>boxes.py , but after cliking one, nothing happens. I made the .py files executable.  in extensions.error.log for all the boxes there is this message:

Extension "DiscRack" failed to load because a dependency was not met.
Dependency:
  type: executable
  location: path
  string: boxes

Any help apreciated


  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 03/17/2020 at 09:08 point

Hmm, guess the Inkscape plugin is still not 100% correct as it is requiring the boxes executable in both the extension directory and the path. That probably doesn't matter if Boxes.py is installed globally with the boxes script being in /usr(/local)/bin. Can you try adding the location of the boxes script to the PATH (for Inkscape).

  Are you sure? yes | no

b.heijenga wrote 03/17/2020 at 18:03 point

I added /usr/share/inkscape/extensions to the path, does not help.

  Are you sure? yes | no

John Hildebrand wrote 02/06/2020 at 15:56 point

Hi Florian. I've been playing around with boxes and I've noticed that the Divider Tray generator doesn't have a bottom. However in the pictures it does. Is there a different set of parameters I should be using to get a bottom rendered?

Thanks!

John

  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 02/12/2020 at 21:32 point

Looks like it doesn't. The bottom edge seems to be hard coded to a straight edge. Adding a bottom_edge param as for other boxes may not be the right thing with the left and right wall being optional. I might have a look for a possible solution.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Nick wrote 02/26/2020 at 10:26 point

Hi Florian, I noticed the same "issue", and just want to tell you that an optional floor for the divider tray would be highly appreciated.
Thank You!
Nick

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Florian Festi wrote 02/26/2020 at 15:24 point

There is a pull request now:

https://github.com/florianfesti/boxes/pull/204

But is still needs a bit of love.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 02/26/2020 at 20:09 point

Ok, fixed up the PR. There's now a bottom check box. Thanks to Erwin Jansen who did most of the work!

  Are you sure? yes | no

John Hildebrand wrote 02/26/2020 at 20:25 point

yay! Thanks!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Guenter Nimmerfall wrote 11/25/2019 at 18:53 point

Hello Florian, I'm very fascinated about your project. But I still have troubles to understand the parameters of your traylayout module.

What do these parameters mean:

 ,> 0.0mm
 | ,> 0.0mm
 |  | ,> 0.0mm
+-+-+-+
|   |  |   | 0.0mm
+-+-+-+
|   |   |  | 0.0mm
+-+-+-+

Would like to create something like this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AqC_xX88GeHCGM4HAdBKW_zwj0aJKGbe/view?usp=sharing

Kind regards.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 12/02/2019 at 08:43 point

This is the layout for a 3 by 2 compartments box while you need a 3 by 3 box. The measurements (0.0mm) on top are the width of the compartments left to right while the ones on the right are the depths. You can replace the - and | by spaces to remove walls. So your box should look like:

 ,> 70.0mm
 | ,> 65.0mm
 | | ,> 59.0mm
+-+-+-+
| | | | 40.0mm
+ +-+-+
| | | | 44.0mm
+ +-+-+
| |   | 50.0mm
+-+-+-+

Sorry, this is a bit ugly in a non fixed font.

Make sure to un-tick the "outside" box to make sure the walls get added to the overall size.

  Are you sure? yes | no

bwente wrote 10/22/2019 at 03:10 point

Suggestion for the new LaserHoldfast... Can you add a taper to the shaft? It would give it tighter fit.

Maybe an option to step and repeat? I know it is easy enough to duplicate and rotate in inkscape so it's not a big deal.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 10/22/2019 at 07:22 point

Well, the shaft is actually intentionally not tapered. Like regular holdfasts it is supposed to wedge in by tilting. One could think about serrating  the edges, though.

Yeah, I actually had a number parameter already in there, but then I added the curve in the top part and calculation the proper distance became more complicated - and then I scrapped the parameter again.

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Stevemcl wrote 09/24/2019 at 19:33 point

Hi, it would be great to have a test template that has a range of burn settings so that I can select the best burn setting for my laser cutter.  Rather than cutting out multiple boxes with different burn settings.  Great stuff, thanks!

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Florian Festi wrote 10/13/2019 at 20:14 point

Ok, this is now available as BurnTest in the "Parts and Samples" section. Thanks for this great idea!

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Aram Perez wrote 08/07/2019 at 00:48 point

Another nitpick: when building a box with a lid, the software does not account for the thickness of material so that the lid does not close. My current solution is to created two boxes. The first with the dimensions I want. The second box I lengthen the x value (I believe it was the x value) by the thickness of the material. After downloading both svg files, I open both (with Inkscape). After ungrouping both files, I delete the back/top and sides (from the first file with the correct dimensions). I copy the back/top and sides from the second file and paste them into the first file. Then I cut the parts of the box, put it together and now the lid closes correctly.

It would be nice if the software accounted for this automagically.

/Aram

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Florian Festi wrote 08/07/2019 at 13:14 point

There are a lot of different boxes. Can you please post the link to the box you are creating here or in a ticket on GitHub (https://github.com/florianfesti/boxes)

Ehm, I just saw your comment below. So I guess this is about FlexBox3. I'll have a look.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 08/08/2019 at 20:56 point

Ok, https://github.com/florianfesti/boxes/commit/e4bdc190bbb2958a5a5c3705a6a54fb11af0b848 should fix this. It's not in the online instance yet. Can you test the change on a local instance? Otherwise I'll just push it on the server.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Aram Perez wrote 08/09/2019 at 01:47 point

I'll just wait until you push it to the server. Thanks!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Florian Festi wrote 08/09/2019 at 21:20 point

Ok, pushed the patch to the web instance.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Aram Perez wrote 08/09/2019 at 23:04 point

Great, thanks!

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Aram Perez wrote 08/06/2019 at 19:19 point

First, this is a great project! But I have a nitpick when making a "FlexBox3" (https://festi.info/boxes.py/FlexBox3), I expected the Z to be the height of the box so the lid is at the Z height. For example, using X = 25, Y = 25 and Z = 100, I expected tall square box with the lid at the top. You can see what I mean by going to http://openscad.net/ and entering the following program: "x = 25;y = 25;z = 100;cube([x, z, y]);". It appears that if I swap the y and z values (similar to OpenSCAD), I do get the box I want. Any chance of making z the height (or having the option to do so)?

TIA,

Aram

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Florian Festi wrote 08/08/2019 at 20:31 point

Those x, y, z, h params need at some point be replaced by width, height, depth, ... But so far I have not been bored enough to start this project.

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Aram Perez wrote 08/09/2019 at 01:48 point

I understand. I think I've figured it out for now so I can create the boxes I want. Thanks!

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dmiarka wrote 07/23/2019 at 09:38 point

Hi, there is a problem with exporting from some of the templates. Like https://www.festi.info/boxes.py/IntegratedHingeBox , I used it some time ago, and now i cant. I got error "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below." when tryinx exporting to svg. The tool is great besides it, but could You fix it please? :)

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Florian Festi wrote 07/23/2019 at 15:44 point

There is still an issue with the web instance. It restarts after a while and then is unavailable but comes back up on it own. I will change the setup as soon as I find the time. IN the mean time you can either wait a while or run an instance locally - which is easy on Linux but probably too much hassle under Windows.

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Florian Festi wrote 07/23/2019 at 15:49 point

OK, hit it with a bat just to be sure.

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dmiarka wrote 07/23/2019 at 18:21 point

Now works great, thank You very much :).

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Aram Perez wrote 08/15/2019 at 13:56 point

I'm having the same issue, some templates seem to work every time but others give the XML error. I tried to install the software to run the server on my Windows machine (has a Core I7) but I get the following error: ERROR: cairocffi-1.0.2-cp38-cp38m-win_amd64.whl is not a supported wheel on this platform. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Aram

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Lomba wrote 07/18/2019 at 09:08 point

Hello,

Inspired by your project, I worked on a variant that could interrest you.

Feel free to check: https://projects.fablabs.io/+makilab/testees

Régis

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Florian Festi wrote 07/22/2019 at 07:55 point

I am currently still missing flex / arcs with finger joints. But that's a feature I want to add at some point. These rounds drawer look like the first thing to try with them. Thanks for the inspiration!

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Zhong wrote 07/14/2019 at 07:16 point

此页面可以添加到语言修改功能中吗?或者你也可以提供类似的教程?

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Florian Festi wrote 07/23/2019 at 15:41 point

I actually already have a branch that it working towards translating Boxes.py. But it still needs more work. Unfortunately I am not too experienced with i18n. I uploaded a first language file to https://translate.zanata.org/iteration/view/boxes.py/master but then the site went down for a few days. So I am not sure if that's the way to go. If anyone has advice feel free to provide it here or in the upstream ticket (https://github.com/florianfesti/boxes/issues/135) - which urgently needs an update.

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Zhong wrote 08/01/2019 at 01:07 point

I have already translated a part, how can I use it, I want to test if it is normal

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Celia wrote 05/30/2019 at 15:17 point

I've been using this tool for a while and it is amazing! Thank you so much for creating such an amazing tool. I've just started using it to create my own patterns. Right now I'm working on various versions of a box that looks like a book. I'm starting with simple closures, but plan on working my way up to a full gear closure. 

Just wanted to say thanks for such a comprehensible API. It took me some time to figure things out (mostly because this was my first time coding in Python), but I'm mostly completed with the first box!

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Florian Festi wrote 07/01/2019 at 09:56 point

Feel free to submit your new generators as a pull request even if they are not yet 100% perfect. I am happy to help.

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Domingo Molinero wrote 04/22/2019 at 20:31 point

Hi,

first, thank you for this powerful tool, I love it!

but now the bad news: After having created maybe a hundred boxes, I am randomly unable to render boxes. I experienced the problem at first on april 18th. For example using https://www.festi.info/boxes.py/ClosedBox with the predefined values leads randomly to an empty svg file. I haven't tried all scripts, but the 10-15 ones i did were similar in failing in about 75% of the cases. 

Altering values does not change anything in the behaviour and failure rate. Problem occures on 3 different PCs.

Any idea?

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michael wrote 02/10/2019 at 08:40 point

Hi Florian, 

the Boxes.py is awesome! I have found - maybe only on my machine - a bug which I thought is easy solvable (but I was not able) - so I tell you about:

When selecting as Top Edge L Edge for slide on lid - both on the universal box and the Type-Tray there is an error on the server:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/wsgiref/handlers.py", line 137, in run
    self.result = application(self.environ, self.start_response)
  File "./boxesserver", line 399, in serve
    box.render()
  File "./../boxes/generators/universalbox.py", line 60, in render
    t1, t2, t3, t4 = self.topEdges(self.top_edge)
  File "./../boxes/lids.py", line 118, in topEdges
    if t1.char == "t":
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'char'

All other Top Edges work perfectly. I just did not find the mistake (even if it was mine...) - I think I did not search enough...

And again: GREAT WORK!!!

Thanks

Michi

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Florian Festi wrote 02/10/2019 at 18:58 point

Thanks for the bug report! Fixed in https://github.com/florianfesti/boxes/commit/e3ba617f22f6321d662f6ee359e79ffc05f5e871

Will update the web instance the next days.

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michael wrote 02/10/2019 at 19:02 point

Many thanks! Works like a charm!

lg

Michi

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sven.wagner wrote 01/06/2019 at 22:52 point

Hi Florian. Boxes.py is realy great. Thanks for sharing it! I try to use a gernerated universal-box on my cnc machine, but I the inner edges of the finger joints where generated with a "over routing" of the edges. Example see: https://www.lieblos.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/boxfertigung-7-900x675.jpg. I can't find an option to deactivate this "over routing" - is it possible to deactivate it with an option? It would be very great to try more of the boxes.py designs on my cnc router. Regards. Sven.

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Florian Festi wrote 01/11/2019 at 22:18 point

Yes, you can set burn to zero. But then you have to do the kerf correction on your own. Probably with some CAM software.

As the kerf correction is done by doing these overruns Boxes.py cannot do kerf corrections without them.

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Scott wrote 12/30/2018 at 17:21 point

This tool is wonderful. I am really enjoying it. I do have a question about the TypeTray function. There is an option to make a stackable bottom but it doesn't seem to make the top stackable. Am I missing something. I can fix this in post but I figure there is an easier way.

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Florian Festi wrote 01/01/2019 at 21:53 point

There currently isn't. But I am currently working on the type tray generator anyway. So i should be able to add this feature the next few days.

Update: Created a ticket at https://github.com/florianfesti/boxes/issues/107

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Florian Festi wrote 01/11/2019 at 22:22 point

This is fixed now. TypeTray can not have the same selection of top edges as UniversalBox - including the stackable edge.

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