Wrapping up a Little Fun - Modeling the Six Sided Die

"It means that I, like God, do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidence."
"V" From V for Vendetta

Afrer modeling nearly all of the gaming dice, (20 sided, 12 sided, 10 sided, 8 sided, and 4 sided), I decided to complete the set with the 6 sided.

Originally, I was going to post this particular die as a bit of a joke.  Draw a square, extrude it into a cube, break the edges and slap some numbers on it.  How hard could it be?

Examples of 6 sided die (courtesy Wikipedia)

Could you believe I found a way to complicate it?  And find a use for a new trick in the process?

I'll share the trick at the end of the blog.  First, I'll start out with the steps I used.  Which let's face it, aren't that difficult.  But there might still be a trick or two to use.

1) First, I created the cube.  Since I used Autodesk Inventor 2013, I used the "Box" primitive that was added in this release.

Using the "Box" primitive to create the cube for the die.

2) Next, I added fillets to break the sharp edges.  I used the "All Rounds" option to get every edge.

Adding fillets to break the edges

3) Finally, I added the numbers to each side of the die.

Finally, adding the numbers!

And that's it.  The die is finished.

But there's an epilogue to this exercise.  Looking at the die, I didn't like the way it looked. The edges were too crisp and clean.  It didn't look like a real die would.  I decided I wanted the vertices of the die to look more rounded than the rest of the die.

Looking carefully the rounded corners can be seen (image courtesy Wikpedia)

Thg "too crisp" corner shown.  I'm using the "shaded with edges" setting to show the corner more clearly.

So how did I go about changing that?  I edited the fillet, created in step 2, and on the "setbacks" tab, I chose each corner of the die, and changed the setback until I liked the result (I used .1875 in my case). 

I found it gave a much more eye pleasing result than the tight corners I initially had.

Changing the setback

The completed die with setback

Ironically, I can't think of another time I've really used the setback setting.  It's possible that I might have used it somehwhere, but I can't recall one. 

I guess it just goes to show that one should never say "I'll never use that tool!"

And naturally, I have to add a rendering from Autodesk Showcase, just because!

And one for the show!

And if you want do download the model here you go!

Click here to download from Autodesk 360 (no login required)

Click here to download from GrabCAD (login required)

I hope you find this model an interesting diversion!