kigster/laser-cutterDokumentation

laser-cutter is a ruby library for generating PDF designs for boxes of custom dimensions that suit your project, that can be cut from wood or acrylic using a laser-cutter. The sides of the box snap together using alternating notches, that are deliberately layed out in a symmetric form.

To use laser-cutter you need to have a recent version of ruby interpreter, install it as a gem, and use command line to generate PDFs.

Make-A-Box is a online web application that uses laser-cutter library and provides a straight-forward user interface for generating PDF designs without the need to install the gem or use command line.

Use whatever suites you better.

One of the design goals of this project is to provide a highly extensible platform for creating laser-cut designs, where alternative strategies can be added over time, and supported by various command line options, and perhaps a light weight web application. If you are interested in contributing to the project, please see contributing for more details.

laser-cutter supports many flexible command line options that allow setting dimensions, stroke width, page size, layout, margins, padding (spacing between the boxes), and many more.

The gem depends primarily on Prawn – a fantastic PDF generation library. SVG output uses Victor, and the command line is built on dry-cli. It needs Ruby 4.0 or newer.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'laser-cutter'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install laser-cutter

laser-cutter COMMAND [OPTIONS]

  generate, g    Draw the panels of a box into a PDF or an SVG file
  page-sizes     List every page size, with its dimensions
  examples       Show detailed usage examples
  help           Show help, for the program or for one command
  version        Print the version
  completion     Print a bash or zsh completion script

laser-cutter help generate lists every option. The common ones:

Height is -H, because -h prints help.

A box in inches, with the kerf set to 0.008", opened once it is written:

laser-cutter generate -b 3x2x2/0.125 -k 0.008 -O -o box.pdf

A box with a lid that lifts off:

laser-cutter generate -b 3x2x2/0.125 --lid plain -o box.pdf

The lid is the top panel. --lid sets how it joins the walls:

--lid full	--lid back	--lid plain

Each is laser-cutter generate -b 3x2x2/0.125 --lid …. The lid is the panel at the bottom of the page, the back wall the one at the top.

A lid edge without notches reaches the outside of the wall under it, and that wall ends at the internal height. So a plain lid is W + 2T by D + 2T and lies on top of the box, and the space inside is still W by H by D.

The same box as an SVG:

laser-cutter generate -b 3x2x2/0.125 -f svg -o box.svg

A box in millimeters on a landscape A3 page, with a 0.5mm stroke:

laser-cutter generate -u mm -w 70 -H 20 -d 50 -t 4.3 -n 5 -i A3 -l landscape -s 0.5 -o box.pdf

Every page size, in millimeters:

laser-cutter page-sizes -u mm

Save the settings of a box, and use them again:

laser-cutter generate -b 1.1x2.5x1.5/0.125/0.125 -p 0.1 -o box.pdf -W box-settings.json
laser-cutter generate -o box.pdf -R box-settings.json
cat box-settings.json | laser-cutter generate -o box.pdf -R -

A shallow box in millimeters, glued shut:

laser-cutter generate -u mm -w 70 -H 20 -d 50 -t 4.3 -n 5 -f svg -o box.svg

A tray with a lid that lifts off, from 3mm material with wide notches:

laser-cutter generate -u mm -w 120 -H 25 -d 80 -t 3 -n 12 --lid plain -f svg -o tray.svg

No special folding option is needed for notch-joined storage boxes: cut the separate panels and assemble them. These designs do not use hinges or fold flat as a single sheet. Use --lid plain for a removable lid, or leave that panel out when cutting to make an open tray.

For a 3" square footprint and 3" height, or a 9" square footprint and 4" height, using 1/8" material:

laser-cutter generate -u in -b 3x3x3/0.125 --lid plain -o storage-small.pdf
laser-cutter generate -u in -b 9x4x9/0.125 --lid plain -o storage-large.pdf

The shorthand is width × height × depth, and dimensions describe the inside space. To nest one assembled box inside another, allow clearance for the smaller box's outside dimensions, including the material thickness; sizes are not adjusted for nesting automatically.

The pictures on this page are the SVG files themselves, drawn with a thicker stroke (-s 0.5) and converted:

magick -density 96 -background white box.svg -flatten box.avif

A Ruby program draws a box in its own process; nothing runs the command line. It needs three things:

require "laser-cutter"

options = Laser::Cutter::Options.new(
  width: 70, height: 20, depth: 50, thickness: 4.3,
  units: :mm, lid: :plain, format: :svg
)

svg = Laser::Cutter.render(options)                      # a String, no file written
Laser::Cutter.write(options.new(file: "box.pdf", format: nil)) # the extension picks the format

Options has an attribute for each option of generate:

• Values are coerced, so the Strings a web form sends will do, and a blank String counts as left out. Keys may be Strings or Symbols.
• A value it cannot use, or a key that is not an option, raises Laser::Cutter::InvalidOption with a message such as lid cannot be "sliding", but must be one of: full, back, plain. Both errors descend from Laser::Cutter::Error.
• An Options cannot be changed; options.new(lid: :back) returns a changed copy.

In a Rails controller:

def create
  box = params.require(:box).permit(*Laser::Cutter::Options.attribute_names)
  send_data Laser::Cutter.render(box.to_h), type: "application/pdf", filename: "box.pdf"
rescue Laser::Cutter::Error => e
  redirect_to new_box_path, alert: e.message
end

Laser::Cutter::Box::LIDS lists the lids, for a select. Configuration, Renderer::LayoutRenderer#render and PageManager#page_size_values, which MakeABox.io called in 1.0.3, still work.

• Create T-style joins, using various standard sizes of nuts and bolts (such as common #4-40 and M2 sizes)
• Extensibility with various layout strategies, notch drawing strategies, basically plug and play model for adding new algorithms for path creation and box joining
• Support more shapes than just box, such as prisms
• Supporting lids and front panels, that are larger than the box itself and have holes for notches.
• Your brilliant idea can be here too! Please see contributing for more info.

Rahulbot-made BoxMaker is a functional generator of notched designs, similar to laser-cutter, and generously open sourced by the author, and so in no way this project disputes BoxMaker's viability. In fact BoxMaker was an inspiration for this project.

Laser-Cutter library attempts to further advance the concept of programmatically creating laser-cut box designs, provides additional fine tuning, many more options, strategies and most importantly – extensibility.

Unlike BoxMaker, this gem has a suit of automated tests (rspecs) around the core functionality. In addition, new feature contributions are highly encouraged, and in that regard having existing test suit offers confidence against regressions, and thus welcomes colaboration.

Finally, BoxMaker's notch-drawing algorithm generates non-symmetric and sometimes purely broken designs (see picture below).

laser-cutter's algorithm will create a symmetric design for most panels, but it might sacrifice identical notch length. Depending on the box dimensions you may end up with a slightly different notch length on each side of the box.

The choice ultimately comes down to the preference and feature set, so here I show you two boxes made with each program, so you can pick what you prefer.

Below are two examples of boxes with identical dimensions produced with laser-cutter and boxmaker:

This is how you would make a box with Adam Phelp's fork of BoxMaker (which adds flags and a lot of niceties):

git clone https://github.com/aphelps/boxmaker && cd boxmaker && ant
java -cp BOX.jar com.rahulbotics.boxmaker.BoxMaker \
      -W 1 -H 2 -D 1.5 -T 0.125 -n 0.125 -o box.pdf

And laser-cutter:

gem install laser-cutter
laser-cutter generate -b 1x1.5x2/0.125/0.125 -O -o box.pdf

.

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/[my-github-username]/laser-cutter/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Create a new Pull Request
5. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)

MIT License (MIT). Please see LICENSE for more information.

Author: © 2015-2024 Konstantin Gredeskoul @kigster