OpenSCAD dice box

The box is made from two parts, joined with cylindrical magnets: the Tray of Readiness, that serves as cover, and the Prisms of Holding, that serve as base. You can choose your own sizes; the premade STL use 4x2mm magnets (hexagonal) or 5x3mm (the 11-set boxes).

To use the customizer, download the .scad and .json file (the latter is found under “other files”) and drop them in the same folder. You will have now some presets to choose from. You can check the bundled PDF “Using OpenSCAD customizer” to learn how does OpenSCAD work and more tips and tricks —no programming required whatsoever! (In short: Install OpenSCAD. Open this .scad file. Make your pick. Press F6 to render. Press F7 to export. Print. Enjoy!)

There are 14 different dice types to choose from:

• d4, either the usual tetrahedron or the not-so-usual truncated tetrahedron.
• d6, aka “cube”
• d8, either the usual octahedron or the not-so-usual truncated octahedron.
• d10, as a trapezohedron. Note that the "good" form of a 5-trapezohedron gives a side view that is pretty square. But there is no such thing as a "regular trapezohedron". Some of them may look more like a rhomboid when viewed from the side, and these may not fit well. (I've seen them sold, but none of my hundred-something d10 is "rhomboid-sided", FWIW.)
• d12, either the usual Platonic dodecahedron, or the not-so-usual (and quite weird) Archimedean rhombic dodecahedron.
• d20, icosahedron, the "king of RPG dice".
• d24, either the nice deltoidal icositetrahedron (kite-shaped faces), or the stranger tetrakis hexahedron (triangle-shaped faces, arranged in squares; a cube all of whose faces have been turned into 4-sided pyramids).
• d30, the rhombic icositetrahedron.
• d60, either the deltoidal hexecontahedron (kite-shaped faces) or pentakis dodecahedron (triangle-shaped faces, arranged in pentagons; a dodecahedron all of whose faces have been turned into 5-sided pyramids).

There are several arrangements available: "matrix" and several radial. The matrix is by far the more powerful; you can choose to have every other row “indented”, meaning that it will have one less dice than the next and previous (if any), and in those indented or alternating rows you can expand (or contract) the X distance between dice holes. You can make a matrix with more than 14 dice, even though the selector of dice type is limited to 14; the matrix will repeat types from 15th on. (So, the 15th dice will be of the same type as the 1st, the 16th and the 2nd, and so on.)

This is intended to work well with the Name Tag creator (and even the Geometric-parametric Coasters). With these, you can create objects, negative volumes and modifiers to further customize your box. With PrusaSlicer you can either add and mix the STLs created by the customizers (with “Add part” or just an object), or make holes for embedding magnets or adding logos in other colors. See the 3MF for examples. (Note that PrusaSlicer 2.6, currently in alpha version, allows adding texts very easily!) Note that both the objects/modifiers from the Name Tag, Coaster and the magnet “diffs” (negative volumes) from this have a non-printable “centering fillet”, so you set their coordinates at 0, 0, 0 in “Object coordinates”, and will be perfectly centered.

The 3MF (and the boxes in the pictures) use the “Print-On-Print” technique by Devin Montes (from the Make Anything channel). You first print one insert, remove only the skirt and purge line from the bed, preheat and change the filament color. Let it drip a bit, until no more filament gets out of the nozzle, and print the next insert (or main object). Repeat until you've printed everything. So, you print onto what's already printed.

Alternatively, you can use the “virtual extruder” technique, where a color change GCode is used instead of a true tool change; or, if you have it, by the MMU (if you have it), replacing the negative volumes in the 3mf by the files without “offset” in their names (the inserts themselves).

Customizing tips and tricks

Note that to make an n-gonal box you will need to do the following:

• Set the width and depth of the “Main area” to the same value.
• Set all corners to “Round”, with a radius of half the width/depth.
• Set the “Precision” of the main area to the number of sides of the n-gon.

A high number of sides will yield a round(-ish) box.

When you prepare a model, it's better to check the base part (Prisms of Holding) to see if everything fits as it should. Otherwise, you may need to adjust the egg scale and/or the pattern radius adjustment, which makes the dice profiles more "packed" or spaced. Using an existing preset may make your life easier, as you'll only be modifying some tidbits. 

The tray preview will display the dice number of faces “floating” over every hole, but they won't appear in the render (nor the object STL). This is just a visual aid to help you make the tray more to your liking. (Remember that positions in the tray and base end up "mirrored"!)

Measuring

Measure your dice. This cannot be stressed enough; and don't take just one measure, but measure all pairs of sides or all side lengths, depending on the type of measuring of the die. (Usually it's the indiameter, that's the distance between two opposite sides.) You might be surprised (or not) on how many dice that passed the mumbo-jumbo "floating in saltwater test" are actually "unbalanced" in a noticeable way. Thing is, most of the rounded-edge dice are processed through a tumbler, which isn't a device known for its perfect uniformity; hand-made processes by dice artisans can quite often render more balanced dice than the commercially available ones! Anyway, there's a good variation between dice manufacturers; I used the ones in the greater range from those I own, but I cannot guarantee that your dice will fit.

Also, d4 are quite a pain to measure properly (and to step on, also!); they will usually have rounded corners, which makes for a bit of a guesswork if you use calipers or a ruler. It's better if you draw the outline of the d4 using pen and paper, and use a ruler to extend the sides so you have the full triangle profile; measure that.

Labeling and coloring

There's an option to add the number of faces at the flat "top" of the Prisms of Holding (bottom of their well) . These can help you put the dice in the right place, as sometimes shapes can be confusing, especially at first if you're not used to this storage system. You can paint the numbers with a Sharpie, or in some cases use z-based color change. You can disable the text by setting a text height of 0.

Laying dice flat, single-part boxes, two-base boxes.

Use the “Lay dice flat” checkbox sparingly and with caution.

When the “Lay dice flat” checkbox is enabled, is very easy to end up with an “impossible” cover tray; one where some dice have to “squeeze” their faces to get into a wider space. Which they cannot do.

You can do “boxes” with just one part, that can work as simple inserts (like the Altoids single part example). To do so, either check the “Lay dice flat” checkbox and set “Flat dice hole depth” to 0, or uncheck “Lay dice flat”, set “Tray thickness” to 0, preview with F5, note the automatically calculated height of the tray, and set the height of the tray to minus that value (so, if the console says the tray is 11.5738mm tall, set “Tray height” to -11.5738mm). There will likely be a bit of rounding error, with a tray resulting in tenths of microns tall; trust me, you won't need to render that piece for anything.

You can also do two “bases” or sets of Prisms of Holding that fit together; remember to mirror the position of the dice from one another, otherwise they won't fit. (Well, it doesn't matter that much if you make all your holes of the same type). Also, flat layouts don't work too well with d6 (there's nothing to hold them) nor d10/d100. Smooth edges on the d10 make the “top-view” shape of the trapezohedron easily inaccurate, and you'll have to add some “fudging” by increasing the size of the dice. Use the measuring tool of PrusaSlicer 2.6 to your advantage.

Enjoy your boxes!