Template Maker Review
By Ben Everard. Posted
This article was originally published as part of HackSpace magazine, which has since been incorporated into Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.
Templatemaker.nl is a website dedicated to paper templates of the sort you cut out, fold, and glue together. Each template has a diagram showing what the object will look like, and can be customised via a number of options. Once you’ve set up your design with the details you want, you can download the template in PDF, SVG, or DXF format and print it out on a normal printer.
Oh, and did we mention that all this is free?
The vast majority of options are different types of packaging – boxes of various forms – but there are also a few decorative items such as stars.
The one feature we’d really like to see is the ability to scale while
keeping the proportions the same. This would be great to change the properties while keeping the aspect ratio, but it would also be really useful for fitting an object to a particular paper size. It would make it easy to, for example, find the largest box you can fit in an A4 sheet.
At the moment, the process for this is:
• Select Expert mode
• Select paper size you have
• Play with the options until it fits in the preview
This isn’t the most onerous process (it would be if there weren’t a preview, which shows just how useful that feature is), but it could be much easier. While we’re having a bit of a grumble, we’ll also point out that the discoverability isn’t great. There’s no menu or search facility – the only way you can find models is by looking through the complete list (and there’s quite a few!).
Overall, this is a great tool, and given that it’s free even for commercial use (if you find it useful, you can support the makers via Ko-fi), we really can’t complain too much about the features we’d like to see. It’s certainly a page we’ll be revisiting in a month or two when it comes time to box up gifts to go under the Christmas tree.
Verdict: 8 out of 10
Loads of designs for you to customise and print.
Ben is the Editor of HackSpace magazine. When not wrangling words, he enjoys cycling, gardening, and attempting to identify wild mushrooms.
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