Looks like our new laser cutter is still waiting for a replacement tube as the original one wasn't working. This gives us time to build a quite huge filter box: 60 by 60cm, 160cm high. This also gave me time for more infrastructure work: I wrote code that restarts the standalone web server whenever the code is changed to make development easier. I also finally wrote some code to detect the size of the drawing in retrospect. So you do not longer know/guess how big the drawing will get when calling Boxes.open(). In now alters the size and the viewport of the SVG file. Code is still a bit flaky but should work for normal use cases. It just overwrites a few bytes in the file an though relies on the new values not needing more space than the old ones.

I also started working on a treasure chest lid for the plain box. It is basically finished already but still needs proper integration with (command line) parameters. I wonder if need a place to put reusable parts that are not generators. There are some in the Boxes main class already but the really should move somewhere else...

In the mean time I have been visiting my old hacker space the Mainframe in Oldenburg, Germany and the the Maker Faire Hannover. So I had the opportunity to spot quite some laser cut pieces and especially boxes. So I have a list of stuff to add: latches, hinges, locks, sliding doors, clip on lids, ...

While I already started coding some of them I probably have to actually try them out before they can go live. Many of them will utilize living hinges or springy parts that will need to be tweaked with try and error. May be some of the latches can be published on faith alone. Stay tuned!