Awesome design and wonderful storage/display!!
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This is excellent – I love all the custom art supply storage that is showing up!
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DEEEluxe!!
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I hadn’t thought of using OpenSCAD for the engraver. I use it for 3D printing. I guess you just stick to the 2D functions? It would be great to tap into an existing skill instead of learning yet another tool. 
Actually, I do full 3D modeling, but work in sheets/faces that are the pieces of wood, and then flatten it to export to SVG. I’m currently using a library that helps generate the cuttable shapes, but I’ve also been writing my own further wrapper to make it easier to generate boxes/trays.
OpenSCAD generates SVG’s nicely - you can model in 3d, then take slices through the model parts and write them out as SVG. The only issues I have are (1) the SVGs are monochrome so if you want to do more than one of cut/score/engrave you have to edit in a tool like Illustrator, and (2) you can only output one SVG at a time, so if you want to generate a bunch of parts you need to write a little code to lay the parts out flat, then export the SVG. Or do each part one at a time.
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That’s good info. Now that you’ve explained it, I’ve done a similar process to generate 2D fractal models to print on the 3D printer.
That is really good to know. I haven’t played with SVG export from OpenSCAD. I like that. That means I can take my fractal models and just cut the middle from them and they are engraver ready! 
I don’t mind importing into Inkscape and making adjustments. I usually do that anyway just to make sure the file is what it seems to be.
BTW: Awesome paint rack! I love the way the modules dock and undock.
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Yeah, I always do some tweaking in Inkscape afterwards; and I’ve found I need to edit the generated file to indicate the dimensions are mm, because otherwise Inkscape treats it as pixels. So the workflow is a bit ad-hoc, but works pretty well for me.
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I’ve run into a similar problem when coming from Fusion 360 .dxf files. After opening in Inkscape, it will NOT allow me to set the display units to anything other than px. The image is the right size, I just can’t visually gauge things as easily. I need to take a good look and see if there’s a setting in Fusion 360 I need to change or if that’s just something I have to live with.
If you use the latest OpenSCAD build, instead of the official 2015-03 release, the svg files have mm embedded in them. At least it does on my machine.
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This is what I do for anything I want to model in 3D.
In the svg file I sometimes have to clean up “extra” joined nodes in Inkscape. I think it is a function of the primitive data types OpenSCAD uses and rounding error introduced by rotate and to a lesser extent translate. I started by making pieces in their assembled orientation and then rotating and translating them flat. I’ve switched to making them flat and then rotating and translating them into their assembled positions and this has helped, but hasn’t totally solved the issue. On the plus-side, my node-delete and node-join skills have been improved greatly.
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That’s good to know; it would save me some annoyance.
Have you tried adding projection(cut=false) to the top of your file before rendering it?
For the projects where I rotated flat it is the only method of making sure everything is captured in the svg. However, I have to use a translate command to nudge it down the z-axis first or even that doesn’t work.
Using cut=false is also how I capture areas I’m going to engrave, like the channels in my sliding-lid-top box.
Love it. I have many, many bottles of paint and Elfa wall storage but hadn’t thought of lasering the two together.
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Sweet design! This will undoubtedly help keep your paints in color order.
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Is this available to download and use or do i need to purchase the file?? its an awesome way for me to organize my gazillion paints 
Files you can download for personal use are in the Free Laser Designs category. If the file is for sale there will usually be a mention of it in the original post or they will place a link to their etsy, or other, store in their description (just click on their name.)
There are at least two paint rack designs in the Free Laser Design category:
And one for Sharpies
Once you have cutout and assembled a couple you will probably see the basic principle and how you can design your own. They are basically boxes with holes in them plus some method of racking or stacking them.
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