trying to wrap my head around joints, components, bodies, assemblies

[hawleyw]

I am trying to model a "Settlers of Catan" game board. 

I've a hex tile and a perimeter/beach tile each in their own component.  I'd like to create an assembly(?) which looks like the assembled board ( 19 hex tiles, surrounded by 6 beach tiles). After I get a whole board modeled, I'll cut out the pieces on a CNC router. 

I am having trouble understanding how to create the whole board.... It clearly needs multiple copies of the hex tile as well as the perimeter pieces, and then they all need to be put into the correct orientation to eachother (with joints?). What is best practice? Keep the hex and perimeter components separate and then somehow copy those components into a board assembly, or create them in the board assembly to begin with, or what?

the file is at. https://a360.co/3VQmoOn

thanks for your help,

Hawley

[TrippyLighting]

I am surprised that no one has answered this yet. Here is how I would design this.

Go through the timeline step by step and ask questions. I'd be surprised if did not have any!

Edit: I uploaded a corrected version that doesn't pattern the central hex piece 😉

Edit 2: Darned! Still contains a bug. Can you find and fix it?

[Drewpan]

Hi,

I love this game, even have it on my mobile. I have been out all day so I missed this one earlier.

Ok, how to create a Settlers of Cataan game.

There are a few decisions you will need to make. Luckily symetry is your friend here and the parts are not that hard.

First decision is are you going to cut out all of the hexes you need and put some kind of Decal on them or are you

going to create individual Forrest, Wheat, Sheep, Stone, Desert  and Brick tiles? If you are going to do the former then

just simply create a hex pattern and cut out how many you need. Remember that you will actually need more than the

19 tiles in a game setup as there is meant to be shortages and abundances. If you are going to set up individual tile

sets for each terrain type then we do things a bit different.

The Beach is simply a shape that has a big hex shaped hole cut into it and then trimmed so that it fits like a jigsaw.

I will assume that we are doing the more complex setup of groups of terrain etc. If I was setting up the file it would

look like this:

Top File - Settlers of Cataan

- Board

    --Beach

        Use the one from Trippy's file. Basically model one and circular pattern.

    --Terrain

        ---Brick

        ---Desert

        ---Forrest

        ---Sheep

        ---Stone

        ---Wheat

        Model as many as you need of each type. One Desert tile and Four(?) of each type so that you separate the Desert

        tile, remove two from the stack, add the Desert tile back in then shuffle and place. That gives 19 and two tiles

        short for one or two resources.

    --Counters

        These are simply a disk with numbers on them. I don't have the board game with me so I do not have the actual

        numbers. It is important to get the numbers correct to get the distribution to work correctly. From memory you

        will need: two of each 2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,11,12 which is 20 Counters and you remove two and place.

    --Ports

        These are disks with the resources on them. I think there is one for each 2:1 resource and four 3:1 ports

        These can be cut as disks and a decal or as individual.

    --Roads

        ---Red

        ---Orange

        ---Yellow

        ---Green

        ---Blue

        There are a specific number of roads to limit a player's spread but one of each colour and a simple linear pattern

        of the correct number. You may just want to create the number of parts in total and use different material to get

        the colours.

    --Villages

        ---Red

        ---Orange

        ---Yellow

        ---Green

        ---Blue

        Five of each colour. Again you may want a generic here and use different materials to distinguish them.

    --Cities

        ---Red

        ---Orange

        ---Yellow

        ---Green

        ---Blue

        Four of each colour. Again you may want a generic here and use different materials to distinguish them.

-Robber

    One is plenty.

If you REALLY want to go all the way then you can program fusion to cut you two d6 dice also.

If you set up the tree as I have then you have only Components with the representative bodies as needed. If you use

patterns then additional components will be automagically created for you if you tell it to.

Join the various edges with simple Rigid joints on as few sides as possible to keep it simple.

That should be everything except Resource cards. That should help you out. Be creative with your design for CNC

I would like to see the finished product.

Cheers

Andrew

[TrippyLighting]

@Drewpan, your advice that joints aren't needed is so wrong that I would have to ask you to refrain from giving future advice until you are less green behind your CAD ears.

[Drewpan]

Hi,

Sorry Trippy, I had my Game Head on. The GAME fits on a table and interlocks naturally. You are correct that for a MODEL

that joints would be best. 😎

Cheers

Andrew

[TrippyLighting]

---

@Drewpan wrote:

Hi,

Sorry Trippy, I had my Game Head on. The GAME fits on a table and interlocks naturally. You are correct that for a MODEL

that joints would be best. 😎

Cheers

Andrew

---

I apologize for being such a grump this morning!

[hawleyw]

Hi Drew/Andrew,

im sorry but the information that you’ve given isn’t really relevant to my question or what I’m trying to learn. 
I simply want guidance on best practice to model the game board tiles without anything having to do with the specifics of brick/ore/wood etc. FWIW I will be using a laser cutter to engrave all graphics and non cnc tooling for road , village and city pieces. 

I have correctly modeled the hex and perimeter pieces. I am simply trying to understand how to model the whole board (correct # of pieces) and then how to use the manufacture are of fusion to layout and cut  those pieces from a piece of plywood on a cnc machine that I have access to. 
sincerely,

Hawley

[TrippyLighting]

---

@hawleyw wrote:

...

I have correctly modeled the hex and perimeter pieces. I am simply trying to understand how to model the whole board (correct # of pieces) a...

---

I cannot help with the manufacturing part, but I had a model attached to my post that should explain how these parts are assembled.

You can follow a similar assembly approach with your own model and then will likely discover that the perimeter piece will need a slight size adjustment to fit perfectly.

I did not have the patience to find out where that adjustment was needed and also needed to rebuild the model in order for my assembly approach to work most efficiently. So I designed the perimeter piece using a top-down (design in place) approach. 

[hawleyw]

Hi Trippy,

I've been monitoring this thread via my phone and just got to my computer to look at your file. 

When I tried to model the full board I was able to duplicate and pattern the hex tiles (which should have no ease) but then couldn't figure out how to position the perimeter pieces the correct distance from the center / origin of the board. Those perimeter pieces are where the ease is added in and based on measurements of the actual game pieces their diagonals which but up against the hex tiles measure out at hexside+1mm.

If I'm understanding correctly: you solved the problem of patterning the perimeter by joining up the hextiles until you could get one which you could place the perimeter against and then doing a circular pattern on that whole group.

The pieces in my original file have the as measured dimensions on them. I'm going to poke around your timeline some more and see what I can do..... I suspect that the best answer for me will to be to join up the perimeter pieces and the center them on the origin.

I'm not clear why you did the copy/paste of the hex tile components in multiple steps instead of simply copy/pasting the hextile multiple times into the one board assembly... can you elaborate on why you did this?

I'll post my next try at a solution in the next day or two.

-Hawley

[Drewpan]

Hi,

As I said in the post, the game has more to it than what is set out to play. There are extra unused pieces.

My original reply was because your question was about how would you lay out the project in terms of Components

and Assemblies and when you would use Joints.

In terms of layout for a laser cut and CNC, always grouping parts that are the same or similar or cutting sets will be

fastest. Otherwise the laser head must travel backwards and forwards a lot which slows things down.

The best way to get what you need is to laser cut all the pieces in one block. In this case you actually DON'T want to

pre-assemble OR you pre-assemble and cut that assembly and the extra parts as a separate pass. Either method

will work, it just means a different setup.

My personal preference would be the second method as it makes the main hex parts in a block and the beach together

that will save material. You would then cut the extras on another piece of material with the Counters and Ports.

Cheers

Andrew