Catan 3d Interlocking Bases: No Magnets, Hidden Tabs, Smooth Water Edges by lawrence26

Last crawled date: 2 years, 10 months ago

Remixed from a couple different sources to get the bases I wanted.
Advantages:
No magnets required
Smooth water edges
No visible tabs
Strong and stable
Easy to move the inside pieces
Added a Catan logo to the base.
Print details:
There are four water versions and 2 land versions. For a 4 player game you will need 3 Type 1, 3 Type 2, 6 Type 3, and 6 Type 4 (18 water). Then you'll need 19 Type 5, mixing up the colors if you're doing red for brick, white for sheep, etc.
A 5-6 player game will need 3 Type 1, 3 Type 2, 8 Type 3, and 8 Type 4 (22 water -- 4 more than a 4 player game), plus 30 Type 5 land bases (11 more than the 4 player version).
There are two Type 5 (land) versions. One has a single tab and one has no tabs. I recommend the "no tab" version but for those who want a much stronger map, use the one with the single tab, or just print a few with a single tab. Trust me you don't need any, though.
Plan for about 1 hour 15 minutes per tile. I can fit 5 tiles on my Prusa bed which takes about 5.5 hours.
Detailed background:
I didn't want to pay $50 - $100 for magnets so I looked for interlocking bases. One good solution didn't have smooth water edges, so I cleaned that up first. However, the tabs still bothered me as they were too visible (blue water into the black land base and vice versa). It also became clear there was no way to move the tiles around inside the board without disconnecting everything.
I first remixed the water tiles to cover the tabs. My first versions were actually too tight (original sizing) so I made the notches slightly bigger for better tolerance. This was still really strong. I then removed all the tabs from the land bases and added 6 notches to them. Yes, the land bases are not tabbed but tabs aren't necessary in the middle.
The water bases are still fully tabbed and the first ring of the land bases (12 total) will connect with at least 1 water tab in any direction. This leaves a very strong board that won't move but still looks great -- in fact it looks exactly the same as the magnetic versions without the hassle or expense of magnets.
Other details
Any Catan 3d tile will fit in here. I'm using a mix from different makers. You can glue them down onto the base. A huge advantage to the no tab system is you can move the tiles around so much easier if you want.
Added a flat bottom with a Catan logo on it. I think this looks good with a Octogram Spiral but up to you how you want to do this.
Some things to ignore:
Yellow wheat fields are just placeholders I printed quickly. The pink Type 5 land base was a test print as I don't use this color much and didn't want to burn my black filament.
The Type 5 model has an extra half layer artifact on the floor. Not sure where this came from but it doesn't affect anything and isn't visible so I didn't bother remixing.
These will fit this storage box:https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4876309/files
Inspirations:
Remixed Catan base, NO magnetshttps://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3355285
Flat Bottom 2.0 Base:https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3263769
And of course the one that started it all:https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2525047