Snowflake Puzzle

thingiverse

See if you can fit the pieces into a complex snowflake shape without taking shortcuts. There are also numerous other shapes that can be created with these pieces, including a straightforward hexagon - I'd love to see what you come up with. I had so much fun learning BlocksCAD that I wanted to try something new. As usual, I'm not a skilled coder and I'm sure this could be done more elegantly but it does the job for now. I first created the basic hex shape after discovering that cylinders with small radii produced 5, 6, 7 sided shapes etc. After that, I developed modules that would add another hex shape at different positions around the first one with a loop to add more if needed (e.g. pos_1 with no. x). Then I set up modules to create the different shaped pieces in the puzzle before finally creating a base with the 'hull' and 'difference' blocks. Everything printed out quickly on my Anet A8 and fitted together fairly well as I built in a little tolerance for that. After my first print, I needed to make the gap in Piece 10 a little bigger to fit the other pieces in but they should be okay 'as is' now. There's an easy/hard setting (0/1 in the variable). The easy setting produces puzzle pieces that can only be one way up, while the hard setting means that the non-symmetrical ones can be flipped over. I have only provided STL files for the 'hard' setting, and I think the 'easy' ones may need to be printed slightly smaller to fit in the base. Please let me know if you print this out and send me any pictures of fun or unusual shapes you can make! Note: I am not the inventor of this puzzle - it is one of the many geometric puzzles designed by Stewart T Coffin.