Tutorials – Crackpot Assembly

01. Website Primer

crackpotassembly — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 08:00:39 +0000

An overview of what the website offers for the Early Access launch.

The services available will continually develop and grow. There’s a long way to go before this website and service is fully matured, and I expect that a lot of its evolution will be significantly directed by the community. So the more engagement there is the better the website will be ultimately. I’ve got plenty of ideas for features as well, and hope to use the Early Access group as focus group.

The Crackpot Assembly website offers two main features:

A catalogue of published Assemblies that anyone can browse through and purchase (you can also edit any Public Assembly whereby you make it a Custom one for yourself).
Access to the Builder Tool through which you can create, edit, publish, purchase your own Assemblies

02. Builder Tool Navigation

crackpotassembly — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 11:25:00 +0000

An explanation of the Builder Tool’s viewport, and how to navigate within it.

There’s a 20×20 grid to build on. Those are the current extents, though that’s subject to change.

In terms of moving the camera around in the viewport there’s both button navigation and the mouse/keyboard navigation to choose from.

Essentially, if you’re accessing through a mobile device you’ll use the buttons, and if you’re at a desktop or laptop you’ll use the mouse/keyboard.

03. Introduction to the Builder Tool Using Starter Kits

crackpotassembly — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 11:21:58 +0000

Learn how to build an Assembly (environment) using any of the Starter Kits.

Each Starter Kit has all the modular Tiles anyone would need to build any orthogonal, or grid-based, map:

- Floor
- Stairs Up
- Stairs Down
- Door -Wall (full height)
- Wall with a Window (full height)
- Wall Corner (full height)
- Wall (half height)
- Wall with a Window (half height)
- Wall Corner (half height)

Tiles are 1×1 (or 5’x5′ in DnD or Pathfinder terms), allowing for maximum flexibility for map layout.

Starter Kits are meant to just be a launching point however, and every user will be able to customize virtually any element within their environment from that point on.

Modularity allows for the connection/disconnection of one Tile to another. This means that once you’ve printed your Tiles off, you can make any configuration you want with the assets you have, and then reconfigure whenever you wish to.

04. Creating a Custom Tile

crackpotassembly — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 09:04:02 +0000

A walk-through of the process for creating a Custom Tile.

Through the Crackpot Assembly site you’ll be able to:

Customize each and every Tile (either create a Custom Tile, or edit a Public Tile and make it custom)
Create your own Assembly using either Public or Custom Tiles
Open up any Public Assembly and if you choose, make a custom copy of it for yourself

Nomenclature:

Element – base level asset (floor, door, wall, etc)
Tile – a collection of Elements saved together in a 1×1 square
Assembly – a collection of Tiles placed together to create your map/dungeon/environment

05. Editing a Tile

crackpotassembly — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 19:31:56 +0000

An explanation of how to Edit a Tile, and an explanation of where those Tiles will be saved.

Creating and Editing Tiles is a unique feature to Crackpot Assembly in the modular environment space.

Editing a Tile means that you can go into any of your Assemblies, or any published Assembly, and make changes to any Tile in those Assemblies that you wish.

So with great fidelity you can craft something which is specific to your wishes or requirements.

06. Assembly Management

crackpotassembly — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 11:17:19 +0000

A Tutorial to help you manage any custom Assembly(s), that you have in your Library.

Take Screenshots for the Thumbnail, and choose your favourite to display.

Edit the description to provide context or background or specific information regarding the Assembly.

Publish (if you choose) your Assembly to make it a Public one that the community can access. Publishing it won’t immediately have it appear on the website however; it first goes through me where I check it out, and if its all good I move to fully Published status. Most likely a formality; really, I just want to avoid duplicates of other Assemblies.

07. Checkout

crackpotassembly — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 11:22:00 +0000

For anyone who wants to download an Assembly for 3d printing, they’ll have to go through the Checkout.

Its pretty straight-forward; you input your credit card info, click on the download link, and download a .zip file with all the digital files ready for 3d printing.

You get email confirmation that your order has been made, and a subsequent email confirmation for when your .zip file has been processed. It’s usually pretty quick, but the larger an Assembly, the longer it’ll take.

08. STL File Review

crackpotassembly — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 09:13:11 +0000

With the .zip file downloaded you can take a look at its contents.

In it there will be all the Tiles in your Assembly, plus a few additional assets to help with modular building:

Riser tiles
several Connectors that you can choose from

The video previews the files in Blender (3d modelling software), but you can also just bring a file directly into your 3d printing slicer and look at it that way.

Each .stl file is already prepared for printing. You will not need to add supports to through the slicer. There are some rare items that have a few supports built in, and it should be an easy thing to snip them off. I’ve prioritized ease of use here, and there should be virtually no cleanup after printing.

09. Quick Reference / Overview

crackpotassembly — Fri, 17 May 2024 03:58:03 +0000

In a nutshell, Crackpot Assembly allows you to create customizable modular environments which you can download for 3d printing. Additionally, the site also allows you to share your creations with the community by making them public, to view Public Assemblies, and to download Public Assemblies to either print on your own and/or to Edit as you see fit Here’s a step by step guide explaining the nature of this website/system/service. Please refer to the Glossary of Terms if necessary.

MODULARITY

Refers to the capability of connecting pieces together in order to assemble an environment. With Crackpot Assembly this can be done both horizontally and vertically. There are a several essential pieces:

CONNECTORS

With each .zip file we include several different kinds of connectors. Two of them are OpenLOCK clips created by Printable Scenery, and one is a variation that I came up with. They each have their pros and cons, and you can decide for yourself which method works best for you.

Double: very solid connection but harder to disassemble; good for relatively permanent assemblies
Magnet: weak connection, requires magnets and epoxy, but very easy to assemble/disassemble
Crackpot Pegs: a compromise between the two

BASE TILES

One of these base tiles correlates to 5’ on a typical TTRPG grid.

There’s one cavity on each side for the connectors to connect to
On the underside there are four cavities for Corner Pegs to fit into
Each Base Tile has a submerged area in the middle for the rare cases when a tile needs to show that something goes below ground level (like stairs leading down)

CORNER PEGS

Corner pegs can be found on Riser tiles, and on any Tiles using Corner Elements

Corner pegs are used in order to build elevation into your Assembly.

Customization

Crackpot Assembly offers unparalleled customization for modular environments. From top to bottom you can decide exactly which Element or set of Elements you’d like to build your Tile with. It works like this. Each Tile is built with Elements. Elements are items like a Floor, a Wall, a Window, a Prop, etc. These Elements are organized into Element Classes.

ELEMENT CLASSES

In the diagram below you’ll see a partial list of the Element Classes available.

The full list of Element Classes is:

Cap Full Height
Cap Full Height w Door
Cap Half Height
Cap Half-Height w Door
Cap Half-Height w Window
Corner Full Height
Corner Full Height w Door
Corner Half Height
Corner Half Height w Door
Custom
Door
Floor
Molding
Molding w Door
Prop Accessory
Prop Structural
Stairs Down
Stairs Up
Wall Full Height
Wall Full Height w Door
Wall Half Height
Wall Half Height w Door
Window

Each Element class has numerous Elements within it to choose from (sometimes hundreds). All told I think we have about 1000 Elements for Early Access, but this list will continually grow, and potentially can grow quite rapidly. Using our Builder Tool you get to create the Tile you want and save it to your Custom Tile library.

In this example you’ll see a few of the choices you have for selecting what kind of door you’d prefer.

Assemblies

Assemblies are the collection of Tiles that are placed on the grid in the Builder Tool. They are your 3d map/dungeon/environment.

I encourage you to start experimenting by selecting some Public Tiles and placing them on the grid. Get used to the controls of placement, rotation, elevation, deletion, and then you can move on to the more complex task of Creating Custom Tiles, Editing Custom Tiles, and managing your Assemblies. For the moment we’ve supplied over 100 Public Tiles. Simply click on the Public tab, and you’ll get the whole list. You can narrow down your search by using the Search field and typing in Style_01, Style_02 through to Style_08.

Filtration

Filtration is the means by which you can reduce and narrow down the results when searching either through the Elements or Tiles menu in the Builder Tool.

Elements are all supplied by Crackpot Assembly. As such, they are all Public.

You have the option of favouriting any number of Elements by clicking on the star icon on every thumbnail. You are told which Elements are In Use when you are Editing a Tile. Its very handy when you want to search for other items in the same style, or if you want to duplicate items.

Tile Filtration works very much the same way, though there’s an additional Custom tab for any Tiles you create of your own. Note that if you Edit a Public Tile and save it, it will be added to your library as a Custom Tile.

Glossary of Terms

Base Tile – the piece at the bottom that the connectors go into, and that all the Elements are built on top of.
Builder Tool – the beating heart of the website really; where you create or edit any Tile, put together any Assembly, and manage your creations.
Connector – the piece which allows two Tiles to stick together. You get a choice of three connectors. Two are original OpenLock connectors, and the third is Crackpot’s variation
Element – the bits and piece your use to create a Tile. They are Floors, Walls, Windows, Props, and all sorts of other things.
Filtration– the way you refine/reduce your search results
Tile – a collection of Elements atop a Base Tile.
Assembly – a collection of Tiles Viewport – the 3d visualization of your Tiles and Assemblies.