Ultimate lego beam and frame generator by dejfrcr

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

This is a work in progress, I make over two updates per week and always test twice everything possible before upload.
Version 0.577215
Redesigned to allow double durable frames. Capable of both halfheight and full height and their multiples to reasonable levels. Every beam or couple of beams has separate height setting available. + hole could be rotated 45 degrees to x.
Added horizontal round holes and ability of sharp corners to make sense to inline ones. Well, now its ultimate tool already :)
Added load of useful presets to begin with including printer dimension test presets meant to use with planned material constants
Fixed horizontal holes vertical positioning, hopefully for goof
1) Basic manual
The "SHAPE" of the brick to print: can be L, T, O, #, 2# or 4#. 2# variation double y axes, 4# double both axes on edges - you need overhang to not render them over basic axes.
You can also create straight beam by setting the y axis holes to a one character string.
Be careful on junction points, y axis ovewrites x axis and outer axis overwrites inner axis. Mind that with Smart corners they get Sharp shape even if inline hole is overwritten.
Final object consists of one or more layers of single or half HEIGHT. Multiplied halfheight has more inner cylinders to fit half pins, but does not support horizontal holes (yet).
With use_advanced true separate per axis setting of height is available.
The HOLES string sets the length of axis and sets the hole configuration from 0,0 corner. So paired axes are symetrical.
Use the character "o" (lowercase letter, not the number) to represent a vertical round hole, "-" horizontal crossing round hole, "i" horizontal inline round hole, "A" for all directions round hole - be carefull with this one, many print setups may fail on it and physical endurance wont be best.
Use "+" (the plus symbol) to represent a notched vertical axle hole, "x" for 45 degree rotated axle hole.
Any other character will create a blank space - I use "W" for readability. Original version and older builds used x for this purprose, but I decided to use that one otherwise.
OVERHANG determines how far from end of inner axis is the crossing axis. I plan overhang for outer axes too, but later.
ADVANCED features allow different hole, length and height configurations of outer axes. As long as we originate everything from corner different lenghts will produce asymetrical shapes. I plan to have a choice to originate in center or some more robust solution to allow cross shaped frames with closed edges and other tricks.
With zero overhang and different heights for inner and outer axes, you can have two kinds of layers without interlacing. The more you overwrite the slower is rendering, so keep outer height less or equal to half of inner.
2) Why this happened and what to expect. I got my hands on Lego mindstorms EV3 and went back to chilhood with my kids playing with it. Soon we got out of bricks, so I ordered here, there...having like tripple of original parts + I have all my old lego kept for decades waiting for me to have kids.
Soon I realized that some constructs I do are too weak, expensive and time consuming as they consit of too many tiny parts forming bigger one, that was never designed and sold by Lego. Thus I found my way to thingiverse and sought for every model that was irregular eventually finding some customizable builders. While the brick making one is heavy, beam kind was cool, but limited to either halfheight simple or up to # shape with full height, one layer only and vertical holes only. I got my way to printer and started doing things, learning everything but programming principles from zero.
Currently my thing is able to do a decent job in both simple custom beams and huge beasts minded for gearboxes and similar stuff. I did a lot of work in fixing correct sizes for everything, but surely its not proven in all cases and every print setup may create its own displacements. For testing I designed Printer test presets that are simplest, least material consuming objects that could be used for calibration. Ofc they are of little construction use, so feel free to choose any other.
It does only things I have thought of and maybe you need something more. I plan a lot of things (see comented customizer items), but many of them require deep rewrite of current code. Feel free to tell me your wish or make a remix.
3) Based on this:
Super Customizable Lego Technic Beam
Modified by Christopher Litsinger
January 2018
Based on Even More Customizable Straight LEGO Technic Beam
which in turn was Based on Customizable Straight LEGO Technic Beam
and Parametric LEGO Technic Beam by "projunk" and "stevemedwin"
www.thingiverse.com/thing:1119651
Modified by Sam Kass
November 2015

Customizable Straight LEGO Technic Beam
Based on Parametric LEGO Technic Beam by "projunk"
www.thingiverse.com/thing:203935
Modified by Steve Medwin
January 2015