OpenSCAD Designing GhostKubes

Hi

Do you know something as simple as cube can be combined in different ways to produce a dynamic exhibit? Erik Aberg has done amazing work combing a simple primitive Cube to create moving sculptures.

Now there are so many different ways to make these cubes. You can make these using paper, or you can find dice from all your classmates and combine them to produce something similar. You can use corrugated sheets, sunboard, wood etc. The possibilities are limitless.

Here we will see how we can write code to 3D print these dice. Although this may not be the fastest/economical way to make these because there are so many alternatives available, still this can be fun challenge to try out how do you create repeated shape by writing concise statements in OpenSCAD. If you are stuck in a room with a 3D printer, you can print hundreds of these cubes and start GhostKubing!

Coming back to the design challenge, here are the arguments which the cubeMatrix() function can take:

  • cube size
  • No of rows
  • No of columns
  • Spacing between the cubes along the row
  • Spacing between the cubes along the column

Here is the example output

This is generated by calling the user-defined function: cubeMatrix(8,5,5,2,2);
where cubeMatrix ( cube size, No of rows, No of columns, spacing along x-axis, spacing along y-axis).
Here the cube size is 8 units, no of rows and no of columns are 5 each, and the spacing is also 5 units along both the axes.

What’s next?
You can write another cubeMatrixHollow module which takes an additional argument of Cube thickness which can significantly reduce the printing time!

Happy kubing!

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