Boxbot
NOTE: This gem is not yet finished, and is a work in progress
BoxBot aims to generate an SVG or PDF template that is meant to be used with a laser cutter. Boxbot will generate a 2D cut layout for a 3D box (parallelepiped) with matching tabs that allow the box to be "snapped into place" without screws, although screws and T-joins can also be added. This gem is currently work in progress, and is a rewrite of the laser-cutter box drawing logic.
Layouts
The following is an example layout of the box that's 5x4x3 (width, height, depth):
Kerf
Kerf is the width of the laser-cutting beam. The following diagram depicts how Boxbot generates templates with the non-zero Kerf defined. The yellow line below is where the laser cuts, the red/black are the areas of the material removed by the laser cutter. The light blue is the "desired" shape of the tabs.
Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'boxbot'
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install boxbot
Usage
Soon.
Development
After checking out the repo, run bin/setup
to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec
to run the tests. You can also run bin/console
for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.
To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install
. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb
, and then run bundle exec rake release
, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem
file to rubygems.org.
Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/kigster/boxbot.
License
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.