I’ve got a bit of a confession. When it comes to keeping PrintABloks organized I am totally making it up as I go.
Back with the Mechs kickstarter, I started a separate Blender file as a “Check out all that you get” render. Then, just before the Beasts kickstarter I came up with the idea of making “plates” of PrintABlok pieces to make it easy to get started. No digging a directory of randomly named parts for 10 of these pieces and 2 of those pieces. Just print the plates to get started. (You can always print the individual pieces if you wanted, too). And at that time I decided that this huge file I had setup as a render of all the pieces was also pretty good reservoir of parts to draw from for the plates, as well as a place to render the assembly steps, so this file started pulling triple duty. And with that, the sprawl began.
Since the Beasts, I’ve make 2 major changes. First, I decided to keep things organized in the folders, that I would give a number to each piece. Secondly, I changed the internal geometry of the connector slightly.
When numbering the pieces I decided the common pieces would all be in the range with 100-199, so they’re at the top of the folder. Parts made for the Mechs kickstarter would be in the range 200-299, Beasts would be 300-399, my latest project, electrobloks, would get 800-899, and 900-999 would are the weird novelty pieces that really have no greater purpose than their own existence.
But what about the plates? I still want them organized and ordered. Where do they go? While I’m putting them in their own folder for now, I still wanted their numbering to stand apart. At first I thought I’d start them with 1000, but that presented a problem. Sure, I’ve still got 400-799 for whatever comes next, but what if this keeps going? (I mean, I don’t think it will, but who knows?) I might need 1000+ for regular parts. So, today, I came up with the solution of putting a “P” in front of the plate numbers, followed by a 3 digit numerical code that lines up with the set that the plates were developed for. P1xx for base sets, P2xx for mechs, and so forth. This creates a little overlap becuase there may be a piece numbered 128 and a plate numbered P128, and they might not have anything to do with each other, but it keeping it simple and clear for now.
But then there was the new connector, meaning every piece I’ve made, and every plate I’ve made with those pieces, was going to have to be touched. And to keep this gestalt render/plating file from becoming too much of a computational load, these files aren’t linked to their sources, meaning I was going to have to export every piece and reimport them back into this sprawling source file and replace every old piece with it’s new numbered counterpart. There may even come a day where (heaven forbid) it’s important that other people can make sense of the work I’ve done and work on it too. And in that case, this mess just isn’t going to be practical.
The sprawl is no longer maintainable.
I’ll admit, I’ve known this needed doing for a while, but I’ve been avoiding it. It’s a lot of tedious, manual, work. But it’s got to be done. So this week I’ve been chewing this elephant up one bit at a time, and I’ve been making good progress. The new connectors are now in every piece, and I’m cleaning up the sprawl today. With some focus I should have this done this week.
But speaking of tedious work, I’ve also enlisted my discord in helping me create a visual reference catalog of PrintABlok pieces. I think this is really going to help people in the future wrap their head around what pieces are available and what they might need for their builds. Of course the newest pieces and plates I’m still working on, but they’ve done great with the electrobloks and base blocks that have already been updated. If you’d like to help, you can request permission to edit the doc.
Of course all the point of all of this is to lay the groundwork for… the future!
