Ludo Board

by kaur-3 in Living > Toys & Games

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Ludo Board

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As you can see, I made a CAD model of a Ludo game board, with all the related pieces and a die.

Supplies

  1. You could look up and find some pictures of Ludo boards, so you can have some idea of where to go.
  2. You're going to need access to Fusion.
  3. Once you have that, try your best to develop a highly turbulent relationship between you and productivity. This step is optional, but strongly recommended if you're looking to have a more authentic experience.

Making the Board

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It's a bit messy, I admit

To start off, make a square for the base of the board. the paths around the board extend 7 square blocks from the center, so pick a size for the blocks (I did a centimeter for each), multiply that by fifteen and a half, and set that as the length for each side of the board. Go to the center and make a square with the dimensions you chose before, then build in 7 similar squares going out in all four directions of the square. Add one extra column of boxes on either side of each line. Make a line starting from the edge of the path and make another line extending from the edge of the adjacent path, and have them both coincide. Do this for all the rest of the corners. This should leave you with the path of blocks you started with, squares in each of the corners, and a thin border going around the whole thing. In the larger squares on the corners, you make a 2x2 grid of circles at the center, small enough to fit in the smaller squares on the board

Offset the gridlines making up all the squares by a bit so you have nearly imperceptible shapes between the squares. This helps establish separate faces after you extrude.

On the matter of extruding, you'll be extruding the shapes in three main batches. First one, extrude everything. Second batch, make the sketch visible and extrude all the squares on the board, leaving the little rectangles made by offsetting the gridlines, but only extrude them by a bit, just enough to distinguish planes but not enough that it's noticeable. And now for the third and final batch, which isn't precisely extrusion, but you're using the tool, so it counts. You take the circles you made in the bigger squares and cut them into the board a slight amount.

Now that that's over with, you can go into appearances, change the setting from 'Bodies' to 'Faces', and adjust the colors of the board as you see fit. You should see the colors red, green, blue, and yellow as more than fit enough because they're classics, and if you do not, then why even make the board in the first place?

Another thing you can add is arrows. The arrows, which indicate the flow of meeple movement, are positioned between their corresponding home color and that color's winning column. You sketch the desired arrow shape between those two components and a block away from the edge and indent it slightly. You can then alter its appearance to correspond to its color.

Meeples

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Meeple, in my opinion, is a great word, so I will aim to incorporate this word in this instructable as much as reasonably possible.

Making the meeples (!!) was a very trying process, especially when the Lofting feature in Fusion seems to react violently to any interactions with you. To start making the meeple, you need to make a circle, roughly the size of the circles you made on the board. Then, using the Offset Plane feature, you elevate the body of the meeple to however high you want yours to be and make another, smaller circle. If needed, you could add a guiding rail so as to shape the meeple to your undoubtedly high standards. Then, you can make a sphere and connect it to the top of your meeple. If you are capable of easily finessing the program, then you could do some elaborate lofting setup or revolve a profile. In retrospect, revolving a profile seems like such an obvious, easy answer. Now that the meeple has been safely constructed, with no loss of mind and yourself comfortable in the middle of your rope at this point, thus begins the tedious process of copying and coloring the rest of the meeples. You need 4 meeples for each color, resulting in a total of 16. Luck you I wish, young padawan.

DIE

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Making a DIE for a ludo board is, thankfully, a very easy task. A DIE is essentially a cube with rounded edges and a certain number of dots placed on each face in a particular pattern. The sides 1 and 6 oppose each other, and their battle was legendary. From there, you go to the next numbers, 2 and 5, and place those on opposite faces. Then you fill in the remaining faces with 3 and 4. You place the dots around the center and work accordingly. You then Fillet the corners of the cube and round out the corners, giving it a DIE-like appearance. That said, you have made your DIE.

Congratulations

You've made it!!!! Now you can show off your uber impressive model of a Ludo board to all your friends and family and maybe your neighbors, if you're that proud of it. I can now set you off and out into the world, and I can feel at peace with the knowledge that you have now successfully (I hope) made a ludo board. If you were looking for instructions on how to play the game itself, you will not find those here.