I’ve been designing organizers for board game boxes, which was one of the applications I was most interested in when we ordered the Glowforge. I have wrestled OnShape into submission and designed some boxes that are the sizes and shapes that I want. After I printed and assembled two of them, I put them in the box to get an idea how much space they took up:
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Beautiful, right! Lots of space for the other components. Let me put the boards back in… oh.
I’m recutting the box to be one piece, instead of two, to eliminate the double wall between the compartments, which should give me enough room for the boards.
At least I’m getting good at using OnShape! (Mostly thanks to the great tutorial @joe1 filmed - thank you!)
Great looking organizer though! 
Awesome!
What game is this? It looks similar to Puerto Rico at first glace.
It’s New Bedford, a worker placement game about whaling and building the Massachusetts town of New Bedford. The tiles on the far left are the whales, which go into a bag for random draws during play. The tiles being stored flat are the various buildings that you can put into New Bedford. The boards are where each player keeps their resources and whales (the ones still on ships on the right, and the ones safely brought home on the left).
It does look like Puerto Rico, doesn’t it? I never noticed that before.
I’ll post more pictures when I have the whole thing built. I’m hoping that this storage system will let me keep the expansion and the base game together in the base box.
“Measure once, cut twice”
No kidding. Even with high precision digital calipers I still manage to mess things up.
I’m surprised Puerto Rico ever got made. It’s probably the least politically correct game out there.
I am interested in this New Bedford game. I live in Lakeville, MA . Are you nearby and where can this game be purchased. I have cut many boards twice because I only measured once.
I’m in Seattle, so it would be hard to get together for a game. I think it’s out of print at the moment, but the publisher has announced a reprint this year. I hope they take the opportunity to clean up the rulebook, which is a mess.
So glad the tutorial helped!
I stepped through it quite a few times, starting with blindly copying you to make simple rectangular boxes, then gradually branching out into dividers. The Auto Layout tool sometimes doesn’t work with boxes with a more interesting structure than four simple walls, so then I had to figure out how to lay out the pieces manually. I may have to figure out how to apply kerf adjustments manually, too, for the dividers that slot into a base, because I don’t think it works as well for the center of a piece as it does for an edge. But your workflow started me on things that were complicated enough to be interesting, and let me learn by troubleshooting, which has been super effective for me.
Inkscape has also been giving me fits by scaling things to 75% size, but I am hoping to get that figured out soon, and at least I can just increase them by 4/3 to get back to my original design, or cut Inkscape out of my workflow by asking my husband (who has Illustrator) to do the step of connecting all the lines before he pushes the Glowforge button.
Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an ax.
very nice. This game is on my shelf of shame at the moment sadly
This is great! I am also in Seattle, and making board game inserts is one of the things I’m excited about. A friend of mine was talking about designing one for his Mansions of Madness and all the expansions. I should work on some for the multitude of Dominion boxes that I have…
I think the first person to make Dominion plans open source should get the gaming equivalent of the Nobel Prize
Dominion is also high on my list for a better storage solution. Right now I have a huge stack of boxes.
ETA: Are you going to OrcaCon next weekend? If so, let’s find a time to meet! I hope I’ll have New Bedford properly pimped out by then. 
Nah, no OrcaCon for me this year. Good luck with your New Bedford inserts!
Not really… there are lots that are worse than Puerto Rico, but this isn’t really the thread for that kind of discussion. Not to sound like someone who is easily offended by that, because I’m not, so long as it isn’t “celebrated”.
Anyway… back on topic.
New Bedford was an interesting game, and I like your insert. I am also planning on making a lot of inserts. I was going to use wood, but I’m liking the idea of using foam more and more. It is cheaper, but it is also thicker so takes up more space in the box.
Speaking of conventions in the Seattle area, is anyone going to Cascade Con at the end of the month? I’m going Saturday and Sunday, and I’m pretty excited. I like conventions where the focus is playing games as opposed to browsing vendors… though GenCon was an amazing experience the year I went.
Also, keep your eyes on the linked page below for when tickets go live for a charity game night the Friday of Emerald City Comic-Con (March 2nd). It is on the 76th floor of the Columbia Tower here in downtown Seattle! It supports the Imagine Guild which supports the Seattle Children’s Hospital, Uncompensated Care Program. I’m pretty excited for this one too!
They also hold a free monthly game night in the Columbia Tower Club (75th floor), so if you want an invite let me know and I can add you to the Facebook group. The last one was last night, which is how I know about the charity event before details have been posted. The next one should be early February.
I got a little inspired yesterday by this post. I haven’t had much Glowforge time lately, so I made some time to work on a Guillotine box. Our original box has seen many many miles, and can no longer contain the games awesomeness.
I used http://www.festi.info/boxes.py/TypeTray to produce the SVG files, and it did a great job with minimal tweaking.
One of the challenges is making the bottom and top boxes the same size, since one has a divider, and the other does not, the box dimensions are different. In hindsight, I would have just done them both with dividers and removed the lines for the dividers in Inkscape.
I have it prototyped in Lowes .187in plywood for now. the fit is tight enough I assembled it without glue. I will probably mill out some pine for the final box.
I’m figuring the guillotine came with the game. Or did you make it and decide to bury the lead?
