Box Maker

A small, offline, parametric box generator with a live 3D preview — built for 3D printing hobbyists who want quick, precise, customizable boxes without dragging a full CAD suite into the workflow.

Status: early / actively evolving. The tool currently generates prismatic (rectangular) boxes only. See Roadmap for what's planned next.

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Features

• Live parametric preview — width, depth, height and wall thickness update the 3D model in real time via sliders + precise numeric spin boxes (0.01 mm resolution).
• Hollow boxes with an internal cavity, automatically computed from the wall thickness.
• Corner rounding (fillet) on the 4 outer and 4 inner corners (vertical edges + floor-wall edges) — the points that take the impact when a box is dropped — with an automatically clamped, geometrically safe radius.
• Cut-away preview on any axis (X/Y/Z) to inspect the internal cavity without affecting the exported model.
• Realistic rendering mode with ray-traced shadows (optional — falls back gracefully if the GPU/driver combination doesn't support it).
• On-screen dimension overlay and 3D axis/dimension annotations (technical-drawing style, with tick marks and numeric labels).
• STL and STEP export:
  • STL — a triangulated mesh, ready to slice and print as-is.
  • STEP — a true B-Rep (boundary representation) export via build123d/OpenCascade, which opens as fully editable, native geometry in any CAD program (FreeCAD, Fusion 360, SolidWorks, etc.). Use this if you plan to add holes, bosses, grooves, mounting points, or any other feature after generating the base box.
• Multi-language UI: English, Italian, Spanish, French — switchable at runtime, no restart required.
• Session persistence — window position and all control values are restored on the next launch.

Why STEP matters for further editing

STL only stores a triangle mesh with no real surfaces or topology — a CAD program can only reverse-engineer it back into editable geometry, usually with visible loss of precision (especially around fillets). STEP preserves exact analytic surfaces, edges and vertices, so a downstream CAD program can select a face and directly sketch, extrude, cut, or drill on it — exactly as if the model had been built natively in that program. Export to STEP whenever you plan to keep modifying the box (holes for cables, snap-fit bosses, ventilation slots, labels, mounting bosses, etc.).

Requirements

• Windows 10 (the primary supported/tested platform for this project)
• Python 3.11+ (if running from source)

Installation (from source)

git clone https://github.com/amigatronic/boxmaker.git
cd box-maker
pip install -r requirements.txt
python main.py

Usage

Run python main.py (or the standalone BoxMaker.exe, see below). Adjust the sliders/spin boxes on the left panel; the 3D preview on the right updates live. Use Export to save the current model as STL or STEP — pick the format from the file type dropdown in the save dialog.

Building the standalone Windows executable

The app is packaged into a single-file Windows executable with Nuitka. A ready-to-use build script is provided in build.bat — see that file for the exact command and for two known gotchas (a missing build123d font file, and a missing lib3mf.dll) that Nuitka's dependency scanner doesn't pick up automatically, along with their fixes.

build.bat

The resulting BoxMaker.exe is fully self-contained (no Python installation required on the target machine).

A GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/build-windows.yml) builds this executable automatically on every push to a version tag (e.g. v0.2.0) and attaches it to a GitHub Release.

Project structure

main.py                    entry point, splash screen, staged imports
main_window.py              main window: wires UI, geometry, rendering, export, i18n, session
geometry.py                 parametric box geometry (build123d) — no Qt/PyVista dependency
mesh_utils.py                build123d shape -> PyVista mesh conversion
rendering.py                 3D viewport: lights, shadows, mesh style
dimension_annotations.py     3D axes, dimension lines and orientation widget
exporting.py                 STL / STEP export
widgets.py                   reusable Qt widgets (labeled slider, precision slider)
i18n.py                      localization engine (flat JSON files, easy to translate)
session.py                   QSettings-based session persistence (window state, values, language)
locales/*.json                UI translations (en, it, es, fr)
box_maker.py                 legacy standalone prototype (superseded by main.py + main_window.py)
gpu_check.py                  standalone GPU/OpenGL diagnostic script

Roadmap

This project is a work in progress. Planned next steps, roughly in order:

• Cylindrical boxes (round tubes/cans with a lid)
• Octagonal / N-gon prismatic boxes
• Freeform boxes from a 2D profile: generate a box by extruding an arbitrary closed spline/vector shape (imported from SVG or drawn as a profile) instead of a fixed rectangle/circle/polygon — e.g. a case shaped like a violin body.
• Lid/cover generation matching the chosen cavity shape
• Optional snap-fit or magnet-mount features
• Linux/macOS packaging (currently Windows-only; the code itself is cross-platform via Qt/PySide6, but packaging/testing has only been done on Windows so far)

Contributions and suggestions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Built with

• build123d — parametric solid modeling on top of OpenCascade (OCCT)
• PySide6 — Qt for Python (GUI)
• PyVista / pyvistaqt — 3D rendering (VTK)
• Nuitka — standalone executable packaging

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 — see LICENSE for the full text.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.