I have polluted matt3o's threads enough with posts about my builder, so here is a dedicated thread for questions, answers and such. I really appreciate feedback and I will do my best to field all the questions you have. I will admit, I am on GH a lot more than here, but I will make an effort to be more active here to field any questions you have.
There is a
very long discussion about the builder on GH which basically tracks my progress from the idea till now.
Tool URL: builder.swillkb.com
The motivation for the tool was the excellant
www.keyboard-layout-editor.com tool. I wanted to enable people to be able to get a plate cut simply by designing the plate in that tool.
Here is the UI you are presented with right away when you go to the tool.
- Screen Shot 2015-03-18 at 10.52.51 AM.png (88.77 KiB) Viewed 5589 times
As you can see there are a lot of different options you can decide to use (or not). I currently support 3 different switch types (with some hidden features to support more which I will document soon, ask if you are interested).
I have three different stabilizer drawings integrated:
- Screen Shot 2015-03-18 at 10.54.45 AM.png (17.93 KiB) Viewed 5589 times
Cherry + Costar will support all types of Cherry stabilizers as well as Costar stabilizers. Cherry Only is basically the same cutout, but without the little cutouts at the top to fit the Costar stab. This will make the Cherry plate mounted stabilizers fit a little more snuggly. The Costar Only support is ideal if you know you will only be using Costar stabilizers or if you are trying to keep the cost of manufacturing down.
The default case type is None. This means that the edge of the plate will basically be at the edge of the keycaps and there will be no mount holes. You can add width and height padding to extend the plate in either direction, but if you do that I would recommend you consider the Sandwich case.
I recently added support for the Poker case:
- Screen Shot 2015-03-18 at 11.01.21 AM.png (9.82 KiB) Viewed 5589 times
This case type is meant to be used with a PCB as the holes are currently hard coded to 5mm in diameter and it is expected that the screws will pass through the plate and the PCB will be screwed to the plate. I am working getting tolerances down to about +/- 0.1mm so I can turn on the feature that would all you to specify the diameter of these mount holes so you could use standoffs and mount the plate directly to the case. This is coming soon™...
The most common case type for hand wired projects will be the Sandwich Case:
- Screen Shot 2015-03-18 at 11.05.56 AM.png (40.58 KiB) Viewed 5589 times
This case type allows you to specify how much space you want around the edge of your keyboard and how many mount holes you want to secure the layers together. The tool will produce all the different layers you would need to build the sandwich case.
So if you wanted to make a keyboard with my swill60 layout:
- swill60_color.png (67.47 KiB) Viewed 5589 times
It would produce the following files:
- screenshot_built.png (225.77 KiB) Viewed 5589 times
As you have probably noticed, there are a lot of different options you can specify. If you have questions about any of them, just ask...
- Screen Shot 2015-03-18 at 11.15.58 AM.png (35.62 KiB) Viewed 5589 times
TL;DR - If you have read all the way to here you can keep your 'keyboard enthusiast' card because you are dedicated.
