Desk Organizing Pencil Cup.

I wanted to make a pencil cup but, I did not want it to be like all other cups. I wanted it to look different. So I came up with this design. It is where the boxes nest inside of each other and make a pattern. There is a trick though, the front box has to be a very tiny bit smaller so it fits well so I created this design and shrunk the first box by 0.25 mm you will also have to make sure they overlap just a little bit with the big box so we can join them together.

Select the front box and then select the big box being careful not to select the small back box and click on the unite option under Combine. That will make them fuse together.

Now you select the back box and the newly formed shape and use the subtract option under the Combine feature.

Once done we have our shape.

I went under Tools and found the grid array option. Then I chose 5. Later learned that only 4 would fit on my sheet of plywood. More on that later. The X spacing, Y Rows, and Y spacing should be all 1. You will then have an array of the same design.

With this design you can nest each tile into each other to save space. This is important, especially when batching. You will select the array and then click on the ungroup option on the right. This will give you individual pieces. From there you just slide them into one another. You can choose to regroup them or not. That is up to you. 

After I made this I realized 5 was too much to fit on a plywood so while it was ungrouped i just deleted one and then made another array. I regrouped them and then Made the X Rows, X Spacing, Y Spacing all 1 and the Y Rows 2. 

That gives us 8 and that is the exact number we need. 

Here is where you will cut the panels for your project. Just make sure you ar aligned correctly and that your air assist is on. 

Since with 8 panels this is an Octagon, we need to cut out an octagon. I loosely assembled the panels and got a measurement of the size it should be, in this case it was 85mm. XCS did not have an octagon shape so I just pulled one of my shape templates in as an SVG and resized it to the proper size. Then I sent it to the laser to cut. I ended up needing a second sheet for this.

 This step can be tricky. The reason I make the design this way is so we can have the panels interlocking where one meets the other and it makes glue up a bit of a trick to get right. 

A tip I could give from doing it is using the base octagon that you cut out as a template an super glue with activator. This makes the whole process quicker. If you can see in the video, this took a moment and I had to go back and readjust frequently. 

At the end you can glue on the bottom and that is it.

The walnut plywood looks great but it looked even better after I put a layer of wood wax on it for protecting. This step is totally optional but it does make your piece look better and also lets you protect your piece.