Using a Jig

Use a finished design by setting its sizes in a form, and export your part. No AI needed.

A Jig is a finished design with a form. A laser-cut box sized for what goes in it; a Gridfinity bin by its grid size and its compartments; a sundial for the place where it will stand. You set the sizes that matter, and 3DCraft rebuilds the model from them, exactly and in the same way every time. Every Jig carries its own checks, so a value that would break the design says so.

Its maker published the sizes that drive it as parameters, each with a label, a range and a step (Making Jigs). A Jig is shared as a .3dcraftjig file: the design, its parameters, a title and description, and a small picture. It runs in the desktop app and in the web version.

The Jigs on the start screen

Under Jigs on the start screen are six Jigs; a click on a card opens it on its Parameters tab.

Each Jig's description, at the top of its Parameters tab, says how to export it. More Jigs, and the source of every one, are in the gallery, 3dcraft.dev/examples. Anyone can make a Jig and share it; it needs no programming (Making Jigs).

Licences. 3DCraft itself is under the MIT licence. The designs of the Jigs and assemblies shown on the start screen are under CC BY 4.0: you may use, change and share them, with credit. The examples are under MIT. A Jig's form names its own licence at its foot.

Using a Jig

1. Open it: click its card on the start screen, or File › Open… and choose a .3dcraftjig file, or double-click the file (once 3DCraft is installed), or drop it on the web version's page.

2. It opens on its Parameters tab, beside Features:

   

   At the top is the Jig's title, with its description behind the ⓘ beside it, then the parameters in groups. Click a group's name to fold it.

3. Set the parameters. The model follows.

4. Export the result: File › Export… (Files, export and drawings), as the description says.

5. Save if you want to keep your settings. It saves the result as an ordinary .3dcraft model under a name you choose. The .3dcraftjig file itself is never changed.

The form

Each parameter is shown by its kind:

• A number is a slider over its range: the value with its unit, the rail under it, and the range written under the rail.
  • Press the rail to put the knob there, or drag the knob. Hold Shift for ten times finer, Ctrl to go in whole steps.
  • Once you clicked it, the arrow keys and the wheel step it; with Shift, ten steps at a time.
  • To type a value, click the value (or press Enter with the pointer over the slider), type it with or without its unit (60 mm, 60, even width / 2) and press Enter. Escape gives up.
  • A double-click on the knob puts it back to its default.
• A whole number with only a few values (a count from 1 to 6, say) is a stepper: − and + beside the value, with the range under it.
• Yes or no is a switch, such as Scoop on the Gridfinity bin.
• A choice is a list to pick from, such as Lid on the laser-cut box.

The form keeps values in range. Typing 500 into a width that goes up to 400 mm sets 400 mm, and says clamped to 400 mm under the parameter for a few seconds (and rounded to … for a value between two steps). When one parameter limits another (compartments that must stay at least 30 mm wide), changing the first can clamp the second, and the form says that too.

Back to the defaults. A parameter that is not at its default has a ↺ next to it to put it back; Reset all puts every parameter back.

Undo. Edit › Undo (Ctrl+Z) takes back the last value you set. A whole drag is one step to undo, for you and for an agent (edit.undo).

When a value breaks the model (a fillet that no longer fits, a wall thicker than the box, a check that fails), the parameter turns red with the reason. A banner over the model says This value breaks the model, with a Back to last good button that sets the last values that built. A Jig's maker should have chosen ranges where that cannot happen; if it does, tell them.

Outputs. Below the parameters, many Jigs show what they work out: an inside volume, a mass, the number of parts to cut. You read them; you do not set them (Measuring and assertions › Outputs).

Closing a Jig you changed asks Save the parameters as a model?, with the lines You changed the parameters of "…". and The Jig itself is not changed. The values you set are lost if you close without saving them. The buttons are Save as model…, Close (forget the settings) and Cancel.

Looking inside, and changing the design

The Features tab shows how the Jig is built, and the history player (The window › The history player) plays it step by step. In a Jig only the parameters can change: the features are there to look at, and an agent that tries to edit them is told so.

To change the design itself, click Open for editing on the Parameters tab (or File › Open for editing). It makes a new, untitled model of the Jig, set as it is now, that you can change as you like, by hand or with an agent.

In the browser

Jigs work the same in the web version, with one difference: the model follows a parameter when you let go of the slider, not while you drag, because the browser cannot rebuild while it draws. Export and save as described in Files › The web version.

With an agent or a script

An agent sets a Jig's parameters with param.list (the form, as a list) and param.set. Unlike the form, param.set refuses a value outside its range, and names the range, so the agent can correct itself. On the laser-cut box:

[
  ["param.list", {}],
  ["param.set", {"values": {"width": "220 mm", "height": "60 mm"}}],
  ["file.export", {"path": "box.svg", "set": "Cut sheet"}]
]

From a terminal, save the laser-cut box first: open it from the start screen and choose File › Save under the name laser-box.3dcraft. Then the same is craft3d-cli run laser-box.3dcraft --cmd param.set --params '…' --cmd file.export --params '…' (The command line and scripts).

Next: Assemblies.

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