Check out the video here.
In the fall of my junior year in high school, I took a Design Technology class. For my final project, I constructed a three-dimensional marble maze using the laser cutter. It would have been intractably difficult to design the maze by hand, so I wrote this library to generate the schematics. You can see a making-of video at my website here.
The endpoints of the library are as follows:
mazes.gui.MazeApplet2Dgenerates and displays two-dimensional mazesmazes.gui.MazeApplet3Dgenerates and displays three-dimensional mazesmazes.gui.MazeApplet4Dgenerates and displays four-dimensional mazesmazes.schematic.SchematicGeneratorallows bulk generation of 3D mazes to find ones that can be builtmazes.gui.BlueprintAppletshows the pieces in simplified form, and shows pieces with poor supportmazes.gui.SchematicAppletshows the pieces in full detailmazes.schematic.SchematicExporterexports SVG files containing the pieces for the laser cutter
This is pretty old code. Nowadays I like to put a docstring on every method, but back then... yeah, it's not pretty. And can you guess who didn't use source control? That's right. Sometime in the far-off future I might return to this project and redo it, but probably not anytime soon. What is more likely is my updating this README file to include more helpful information; currently it is quite spare, as you can see. If you are interested in this project, please feel free to contact me at contact+mazegen@radian.codes and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
- I recommend running this code from Eclipse. This will allow you to easily run the library from each of the entry points listed above. Plus, some of the applets require console interaction.
- It's currently unclear to me (this project having been written 2+ years ago) whether the mazes or the bin/mazes directory is used for saving and loading maze files. Or perhaps both are used.
- It takes a long time (possibly as much as several days) to generate
a valid
6x6x6maze using SchematicGenerator.5x5x5is much more reasonable and any smaller size is super fast. - The schematic for the maze I actually built is located in
mazes-svg/maze6_000, and the maze file ismazes/maze6_000.chmz. I'm unsure why there's also a file namedmazes/maze6_000.maze. Themazes-svg/maze6_000_classicfolder is kept for only sentimental reasons. .mazefiles are unchecked mazes and.chmzfiles are checked mazes. Checked mazes don't have unsupported pieces and other features that would make them impossible to build. It still took 24+ hours for my Dad and I to construct the real maze, though.- The total time for this project was 4 weeks for coding and 2 weeks for construction, at approximately 60 hours/week.
- Various dimensions (such as the thickness of material being used for
the laser cutter) can be changed in
mazes.schematic.Dimensions. - The algorithm used in this project to generate mazes is called
the Growing Tree algorithm. I think I used
a 50/50 split between Newest/Random (see the linked website for an
explanation). It's easily generalized to an arbitrary number of
dimensions, and it is used without modification in each of the three
versions of
MazeApplet.
MazeApplet2D.windowSize
MazeApplet2D.mazeSize
␣to advance maze generationAto toggle animation of maze generation
Sometimes the window does not resize automatically to fit the maze. If this is the case, resize it manually.
MazeApplet3D.gridSize
MazeApplet3D.windowBuffer
MazeApplet3D.mazeSize
MazeApplet3D.lineWidth
␣to advance maze generationAto toggle animation of maze generationFto complete maze generationRto reset maze generationSto save current maze generator status to a file (requires console interaction)Lto load a previously saved file (requires console interaction)← → ↑ ↓to change the camera angleOto switch the orientation of the mazeQto generate a new random mazeCto toggle display of solution
Sometimes the window does not resize automatically to fit the maze. If this is the case, resize it manually.
MazeApplet4D.gridSize
MazeApplet4D.layerOffsetX
MazeApplet4D.layerOffsetY
MazeApplet4D.metalayerOffsetX
MazeApplet4D.metalayerOffsetY
MazeApplet4D.windowBuffer
MazeApplet4D.mazeSize
MazeApplet4D.lineWidth
␣to advance maze generationAto toggle animation of maze generation
You will need to enter the name of a maze file at the command line on the launch of both of these applets. This can be a maze that has been completed generated by MazeApplet3D (press S in that applet to save), or it can be one generated by SchematicGenerator.
T L O P E K Cto select a piece set (stands for [T]etris pieces, [L]ayer pieces, [O]utlines of layer pieces, [P]erforations in layer pieces, perforations in layer pieces with [E]rrors displayed (i.e. unsupported pieces), [K]omposite layer pieces, [C]omposite tetris pieces)
R T Yto select the tetris piece setJ K Lto select the layer piece setA S Dto select the side piece set
`to deselect the current piece set; 'to go backwards and forwards through the currently selected piece set0to reset the selected piece to the first (default) piece (after it has been changed by semicolon and quote)← → ↑ ↓to change the camera angleG V B Nto pan the camera orthogonally1 ... 6shift-1 ... shift-6to modify scale factors (advanced)␣to toggle piece visibility - if a piece is "visible" you can see it even when other pieces are selected (multiple pieces may be "visible", even if they are in different piece sets)- =to make "not visible" and "visible" all the pieces in the currently selected set, respectively\to swap whether "visible" but non-selected pieces are dimmed relative to the selected piece/three times quickly to reset all selections and visibility as well as the camera angle
These require console interaction and have no graphical interface.