The Basics of Shape Jam & How 2 Make It

Shape Jam is a competitive game where you compete against opponents to get all blocks out of the grid trough openings in a premade wall in the fastest time possible. The removable grid wall pieces on the border of the board allows for a diverse variety of configurations, allowing replayability, challenges, and game diversity. Here, this is a basic walkthrough on how to create and build this game for yourself.

Preliminary rules for playing this game:

1. All competing players must get all game pieces out of the board through a premade border with gaps in it using the border pieces in the fastest time possible.
2. All competing players get an individual board and set of pieces for themselves.
3. Taking pieces out of the board during a round is automatic disqualification and automatic win for your opponent.
4. All competing players must have the same starting border and grid piece configurations to ensure fairness and eliminate unfair advantages.
5. Grid pieces only slide forward or backward: it can't shift side to side.
6. Whoever gets all pieces out of the grid first with the fastest time wins a round.
7. Players decide and agree on how many rounds they want to play for.
8. Each individual round must have a different board configuration than the last round.

Note: This implies that you already have prior knowledge on how to use Fusion 360 as a program, so if you don't know how to use Fusion 360, learn how to use it before starting on this project.

• Any 3D Printer That Accepts STL files
• Fusion 360
• PLA Filament

Go into Fusion 360; go into the Data Panel to make a new project. Name it however you want, then double click it to enter your new project. For the dimensions of an individual square on the grid, it's width and height are the same value: 0.5 in X 0.5 in. The square inside the grid square (which is what your block is guided along during the game) is 0.3 in X 0.3 in. Now you have one part of the board's grid. The grid must be a square, but you can have however many squares you want on each side of the grid (e.g., 10x10, 12x12, 5x5, 8x8, etc.).

Tip: If you using the rectangular pattern tool, you should have .5 at the end of your inch length measurement for even quantities of squares.

For the outer borders, you do not make an actual wall. You will create pegs where the wall pieces will insert into to act as the walls of the grid (making those pieces comes in a later step). For this, the border surrounds the entire square grid and must have the same thickness for all 4 sides. In this case, the border thickness is 0.3 in wide. The corners are to be made with 0.3x0.3 in squares and fixed in place to the border. The pegs on the border are rectangles that are 0.3 inches in width, and 0.1 inches in width. These are to be horizontal/vertical to the smaller squares, and the peg's length must be equal to the side length of the smaller squares inside the grid squares that guide the blocks. Repeat this for every square on the grid.

After finishing the entire sketch of the game board as a whole, save your design and extrude it using the Solids tool. For how much you should extrude it, the floor of the grid and border are the same height: 0.3 in. The smaller squares inside the grid squares (that guide the individual blocks) are to be all extruded to 0.5 in. The fixed side corners of the border are to be 0.6 in. Now you have completed your board, and it is now ready to be exported as an STL file to be ready to print. Expect 15 hours to print.

Note: Use an enclosed 3D printer not exposed to the elements for a lesser chance of print failure and the best results.

While waiting for the board to print, let's demonstrate how to make a piece. It is quite simple. It is 0.450 inches in width, 0.5 in height, 0.375 inches for the width of the pass-through in the middle of the block, and 0.25 inches for the pass-through's height. Save your sketch. The length of the block's extrusion is the same as the witch of the block in the sketch. Now you have a square block. To make a longer rectangle, you make a copy of your original block sketch and simply add 0.45 to the original extrusion value of 0.450 for the square block. (2 sp rectangle = 0.90 in, 3 sp rectangle = 1.35 in, so on).

For border pieces, it's also very simple. The length of the border piece is 0.25 in, and its width is 0.45 in. The rectangle inside the border piece is centered on all 4 sides, and the length of this rectangle is 0.4 in, and the width is 0.106. Save your sketch, and extrude the piece to a height of 0.6 in. Then you will extrude the center small rectangle to a height of 0.35 in. Now you have a border piece.

Now that your board has finished printing. You will print the all game pieces. Go into any printing program of your choice and export the print file to a USB. To rapidly duplicate pieces, press Ctrl+C to copy the piece, and hold down Ctrl and press V multiple times to rapidly duplicate any piece to the amount you want. Repeat this process for all other pieces. The time estimated to print all the pieces will take over 24 hours, or 1 day.

After printing, sand down the sides of the border pegs that hold the border pieces in place. Any grit sandpaper is fine to use. Sand it down until the border piece is able to fit onto the border peg snugly (not too loose, as it will fall off during gameplay, and not too tight, as it will make it extremely hard to make board configurations and take pieces out with risking snapping the pegs off the board itself).

After you're done sanding, wipe down the border pegs with isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) to get rid of sanded filament powder, and to make the pegs have a smoother surface.

After this, you officially printed out the entire physical game itself!