boxes.rs

A Rust TUI for generating laser-cut box outlines — in the spirit of florianfesti/boxes, but with a live terminal preview, cut-path optimization, and first-class support for Kitty, classic terminals, and browser-based "web TUIs".

Output formats: SVG and DXF (R12), exportable to disk or straight to the system clipboard.

Features

Designs

Design	Description
Closed Box	6 panels, finger-jointed on all mating edges
Open Tray	5 panels, flat wall tops
Divided Tray	Tray plus internal dividers with friction-fit bottom tabs into floor slots
Hinged Box	Tray with a one-piece wrap-around lid using a living hinge (staggered relief cuts), thumb scallop, and engraved fold guides

Optional hex ventilation pattern (v key) can be punched into the base panel.

Cut-path optimizations (beyond boxes.py)

• Shared-edge deduplication — set Part spacing to 0 and panels of equal width are mirror-butted so mating outlines collapse into a single cut line. On the default closed box this drops total cut length from ~1840 mm to ~1646 mm and removes two full panel edges of burn/char.
• Segment dedup + re-chaining — coincident segments anywhere on the sheet are cut once; remaining segments are re-chained into the longest possible polylines, minimizing pierce points (each pierce costs time and scorch).
• Collinear merge — consecutive collinear vertices are removed for smaller, cleaner files.
• Travel ordering — inner cuts (slots, vents, hinge) are ordered before outlines, then greedily nearest-neighbor sorted to reduce head travel.
• Kerf compensation done in the joint generator itself: finger flanks are shifted by ±kerf/2 so fingers come out wider and gaps narrower — joints fit snugly straight off the machine.

Terminal tiers

boxes.rs probes the environment at startup and picks the richest tier:

Tier	Detected via	Preview	Clipboard
Kitty	TERM=*kitty*, KITTY_WINDOW_ID	Braille canvas plus hi-res raster preview via the Kitty graphics protocol (p key)	OSC 52 + system tools
Modern	xterm-256color, tmux, WezTerm, Alacritty, ttyd/xterm.js web TUIs	Braille canvas	OSC 52 + system tools
Basic	anything else	ASCII-safe UI	OSC 52

webtui: running under ttyd, GoTTY, or any xterm.js front-end works out of the box — the Modern tier's braille preview renders fine in browsers, and clipboard copy uses OSC 52, which xterm.js forwards to the browser clipboard. So c (copy SVG) works even when boxes.rs runs on a remote box viewed through a browser tab.

Clipboard strategy: try wl-copy, then xclip, then fall back to OSC 52 (which also traverses SSH and tmux).

Building

cargo build --release
# binary at target/release/boxes.rs

MSRV: Rust 1.75 (dependency versions are pinned in Cargo.toml accordingly).

Running

./target/release/boxes.rs            # interactive TUI
./target/release/boxes.rs --export both --out mybox   # headless export
./target/release/boxes.rs --help

Keybindings

Key	Action
↑/↓ or j/k	select parameter
←/→ or h/l	adjust value (Shift = ×10)
Enter	type a value directly
d	cycle design
m	cycle material preset
v	toggle hex ventilation
p	toggle Kitty hi-res preview
s / x	save SVG / DXF to disk
c	copy SVG to clipboard
q	quit

Configuration (TOML)

Config is looked up in $BOXES_RS_CONFIG_DIR, then ./config, then ~/.config/boxes.rs.

materials.toml — material presets:

[[material]]
name = "Plywood 3mm"
thickness = 3.0   # mm
kerf = 0.15       # mm — calibrate for YOUR machine (see below)

defaults.toml — startup parameters:

design = "closed_box"   # closed_box | open_tray | divided_tray | hinged_box
width = 120.0           # outer dimensions, mm
depth = 80.0
height = 50.0
finger_width = 12.0
material = "Plywood 3mm"
dividers = 2
hinge_columns = 14
spacing = 0.0           # 0 enables shared-edge cut deduplication
output_dir = "."
file_stem = "boxes.rs"

Output

• SVG: millimeter units, red #ff0000 0.1 mm strokes for cuts, blue #0000ff for engraves — the convention most laser software (LightBurn, Glowforge, Epilog drivers) recognizes directly.
• DXF: ASCII R12 (AC1009) with CUT and ENGRAVE layers, $INSUNITS set to millimeters. Validated against ezdxf.

Notes for good cuts

• Kerf calibration: cut a 20 mm test square, measure it, and set kerf = 20.0 - measured. Kerf varies with material, power, and speed.
• Dividers are friction-fit; if they're loose, bump kerf up by ~0.05 mm.
• Living hinge: bend gently a few times before final assembly; thinner material (≤3 mm) bends best. Increase Hinge columns for a tighter radius.