Construction brick ruler
Instruction
Putting together the Eiffel Tower, Concorde or a Japanese Castle?
finding yourself picking up a 10x2 when you need a 12x2?
Sick of counting the number of studs piece by piece?
Make your life easier with this handy ruler, sized to fit the F1. Works with most popular construction bricks
First, I wanted to use the full area of the material I had, so I made a boundary box in CAD at 100mm square (Purple) I locked this in CAD, so it would not export when I came to export an SVG.
Then I set to work making the ruler. Common building block studs are under 5mm in diameter, and 8mm center to center. So I made a line pattern matching that, with a depth of 2mm - deep enough to let you put the ruler on square to the block, or flat next to the studs. (Black)
After that came labelling - the tedious part! I wanted the numbers to be nice and readable, so I chose a nice clean font and lined up each to the gaps. (Red)
Once I was happy, I exported the design to .svg format.
I imported the newly created svg into XCS.
I then centered it onto the work area with the built-in snaps.
As my CAD program does not subtract holes in text, I had to go through and use the Combine → Subtract at overlap to make sure that the holes in 4,6,8,9,0 and various letters were correct.
For cutting parameters, I started with the 3mm Basswood Plywood setting. I then tuned these slightly for the cut.
Once I was happy, I then realised I could make two rulers in the same 100x100 sheet. So I added a second canvas, copied the contents of my first canvas across, copied it within that canvas and then rotated it 180 degrees. I then aligned both to maximise use of the material.
Time to add the black cutting bed to the F1, place the material, and set the focus!
Once the cut is done, pop it out from the sheet!
As you can see, it's now quick and easy to find the correct width/length piece for your next brick-building project!