I started with the toolbox frame, being a Harbor Freight "20 Bin Portable Parts Storage Case" (any of the mustard-yellow bins came with it). $10 for each one, and two was more than I needed. It's completely possible to have remade the basic box myself, but I cheated. This project by cpodbob was a fine start - I really liked the feet they had made.
Most of my new boxes needed to be a 2x2 - big enough for playing cards. Before I started modifying THAT box, I printed a basic box to get a feel for how thick the walls would turn out, that the feet would fit properly...the boxes that came with the Harbor Freight tray had small pegs for feet.
First box, the walls were a bit thin at 1.5mm. 3 was more solid than I needed, so I evolved down to 2mm. Did you notice the crosses embossed in the bottom of the lid? The trays needed to either fit in them or at least not be interfering with them. 2mm was good.
In Blender, I made a copy of the 2x1 box, multiplied its width by two...but that made those awesome feet stretch out. I went back to the original box, went into wireframe mode (z), used the (b)ox selection tool in edit mode, and grabbed one side to match the copy's new width.
Good Design: I added a hole in the bottom in each of the boxes, to push things through from the back. This means there's no awkward "slamming down a box upside-down to get something out". This will come back even more with the trays later. (A simple Boolean operation, selecting the box and choosing difference with a cylinder.)
Event Card Boxes (City & Road)
Event card decks were my next consideration. It needed three compartments - 30-ish unlocked cards that would be pulled out often, a tray for the cards that had been experienced but not removed from the game, and room for 30-ish locked cards (needing an event to put them into the unlocked deck).
The first attempt had the dividers opening up in different directions. One set of holes on one side of the box, halfway up. Another set of holes at the other side, slightly further up on the box.
Bad Design: the underside divider got caught.
Good Design: there was enough room between them, when they were both pivoting from the same side, that both could open.
Difficult to see, the event box dividers were not flat pieces with pegs slapped on - I wanted the pegs to be pushed in, so when they popped into the holes they would stay. PETG is great as a filament - I made the original "arms" too thick to push easily. Slimming it down to 11mm meant that it was still solid, but just flexible enough for the posts to pop in.
Monster Trays
One of the organization needs of Gloomhaven, is to find the correct monster standees for what is going to fight that scenario. When playing other people's games, a huge plastic baggie was the worst. You didn't know how many to find and you needed to compare and contrast against hundreds of other monster tokens. Except, these are 3x2 boxes, instead of the 2x2 boxes I remixed earlier.
It works out that you need 6 trays for the different monsters. Each of the mini trays for each monster, had a hole in the back - you don't need to dump the whole tray to get just one stack out. You can also fit 6 monster standees per mini tray (sometimes 10 for the smaller monsters)...and the Harbor Freight tray is tall enough for exactly 3 trays.
Bad Design: I should have designed for the Earth Spirit. I had to remake the tray because I thought I could eyeball the dimensions "enough".
Bad Design: I also didn't know how many mini-trays I needed. I got lucky. I should have done my homework, counted it all out, then recounted it.
Good Design: The trays were stackable, so they needed foot cut-outs to sit in. I could have just made them all flat with no feet, but this gives them better stacking. I was happy with adding the cutouts.
Making the mini-trays - it was important for them to line up. For this, I was in edit mode, and used the knife tool with "c" to make the cuts straight across, and "z" to cut through as if in wireframe.
To cut out the area for the feet, I copied the bottom outside vertexes of the feet, and dragged them to the top, then started merging vertexes (alt-m) first to last. This meant I didn't need to redo all of the planes. It was still tedious, but only 10 minutes of work. Measuring 3 trays from top to bottom, it worked out to tray+feet+tray+tray, as the second and third feet fit into the tray beneath them.
You can also see the Boss Standee tray - there's a mini-tray for the huge Stone Golem standees, and the rest of the "large size" standees fit loose in the un-trayed area.
The red tray holds the monster stat cards & envelopes. Mostly just a big 3x2 tray, but added lips inside the box so the envelopes would sit on those. Again, a hole in the back to push things out. This tray was 2 stacks high, combined with the Boss Standee tray it fit flush to the Harbor Freight Tray.
Dead Card Box
I also made a dead-card box, for the cards removed from game. I considered gluing shut, but haven't done it...yet. For the embossed "broken card" icon for the cover, I took a card-shaped cube, used the knife tool to make cuts in a zig-zag fashion, and then used the "p" selection tool to break it into two parts. This allowed me to rotate only part of the total card-cube, and then I "j"oined them back together, so I could face the two bottom parts of the ripped card back together.The cover rests on some extruded shelves, instead of the cards so that more cards can be shoved in.
Store Divider
The store is frequently messy. You have the store, future store cards from prosperity, item designs from chests and events, and random item designs. Hopefully they will all end up in the store, but in the beginning, each separate.
The design challenge was to have the dividers stay upright and solid, but be able to slide to accommodate more/less cards in the various stacks.
Good Design: Don't make more headaches than you need - reduce complexity, especially multiple tolerances.
I removed one side of the groove (on the part closest to the box) and thickened the tongue to take up the same space. I also made the dividers thicker so they would stay vertical more easily.
Overall
- My Gloomhaven storage method turned out really well. I might tweak some more storage boxes later, as demands come up.
- I learned the knife tool a lot better.
- I addressed card mix-up issues for the store and events.
- I probably could have made the box from scratch, instead of a remix.
- Is it lazy to use code that's already there and suits your purposes? Existing box gets repurposed, I'll call that a mixed-win.
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