Back to Cardboard
I hit a wall with CAD yesterday. I got a little frustrated, figured things out, but then I just felt confused about my design. How long do my tabs need to be? How precise do I need to make my slots and tabs? If I said the overlap hits at 210 mm, then do I place the center of the slot or the edge?
So I decided to get off the computer and back to building (actual, physical) things. It went faster than I expected. Before long, I had a working drawer full of dividers.
A few things I learned:
My cuts were off (as expected). Most of the slats were too long and didn't fit inside the drawer. The joinery placement didn't seem to matter as much as the overall lengths. Confirms my counter-intuitive principle that it’s better to be slightly too short than even a tiny bit too long. Also my lifelong doubts in my ability to measure and cut straight.
It kind of sucked. Even once I finally (and sloppily) resized things, it still felt off. I'm not sure if it's the cardboard material or the design. Compared to little buckets, the dividers felt leaky, like small items would just slip underneath or into the next section.
I started redesigning. Maybe a base layer with subtle divots or texture. Or maybe I just want to make modular mini-buckets.
Back to the goal
Regardless, I want to finalize these CAD designs now that I have more info, and go through a full cycle with a wood or fiber board prototype from Send Cut Send.
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