Project using multiple boxes

[gcollic]

Hello @florianfesti ,

For a bigger project composed of multiple boxes, what would you suggest in order to contribute it back to the community ?

For example, a box insert for a specific board game, with maybe some DividerTray, TypeTray, other small boxes, and some very specific parts for this game. There would be very few parameters to generate the full project (parameters of the sub-components are fixed by the game insert design). Maybe just the material thickness, and if components for a specific expansion of the game should be generated too.

I did components in Boxes.py, and contributed the DividerTray box type, and I feel like there could be a way to contribute a full specific project too, instead of just extracting and contributing the generic parts.

An option would be to create a descriptive file format with a list of all the boxes to generate and their parameters, file which could be used as a parameter to Boxes.py.
Or a class which instantiates by code the different Boxes it needs, and creates some other very specific parts. In theory, it could be implemented as another Boxes subclass, in a new "Game Insert" ui_group, but I don't feel like it's the right way to go, what do you think?

A lot of other game inserts could be easily created by forking/copying an existing game insert from a similar game (or a previous edition of the game, or the base game before the brand new extension was released, etc.). I feel like there is demand for this kind of specific or bigger project sharing.

As always, thank you very much, Boxes.py is wonderful :-)

[florianfesti]

Trays and inserts for specific board or table top games are clearly a welcome addition to Boxes.py. Unfortunately I don't have good answers on how's best to do that.
Obviously one can just create a new generator for each game. Those could go to the "Misc" group for now until there are enough of them to deserve a UI-Group on their own.

But there is currently no good way of reusing other generators other than just copy and pasting code. I like your idea to have some sort of meta generator that just creates links to other generators. This will work great as long the ensemble is made from a small number of pieces e.g. a TypeTray and a DividerTray. I guess this will get unwieldy if you have lots of standalone boxes - like using a TypeTray upright and adding a box as a drawer in each opening. So I am not quite sure if it is worth adding another kind of generator and figuring out how it can work both on the web and on the command line.

Another idea might be passing the global canvas to a generator and have it draw it pieces at the right spot. Yes, right now the generators assume the parameters are passed directly by the user but a generator could also just instantiate generators on its own. This would also make it easy to have different settings for the different parts. Having smaller boxes made out of thinner material might be a huge cost saver for elaborated projects with lots of internal components.