WallPlate

OpenSCAD Library for drawing Electrical Wall Plates

Electrical wall plates are easy to buy so long as the devices you are trying to cover are a modern standard or not in some strange order in a muli-gang box. Decora-style devices are usually the way to go, but what if the device is old or just unusual.

This library can generate wall plates of standard sizes with any number of devices (gangs). It can also create plates of arbitrary size and attributes to be the base of a custom design.

Installation

Cloning the repository on to a local disk is enough to use the library. If new wall plate files are kept in the top directory of the worktree then OpenSCAD should be able to find all the pieces. Otherwise, the folder WallPlate can be copied to any place in the OPENSCADPATH.

Usage

Getting Started

The only library required to make something happen is the Generator.

    /* Base Generator library */
    use <WallPlate/WallPlate_Generator.scad>;

This will also include the WallPlate/WallPlate_Dimensions.scad library which contains, not surprisingly, the standard dimensions for the various sized plates along with bunches of constants and functions for handling them and the $dimensions vector.

To add the modules that generate the particular devices, their libraries need to be included by name.

    /* Device specific libraries */
    use <WallPlate/WallPlate_Decora.scad>;
    use <WallPlate/WallPlate_ToggleSwitch.scad>;

Just to be lazy, everything needed to make a wall plate, including the Generator, can be brought in with one include.

    /* Just include all the Devices */
    include <WallPlate/WallPlate_IncludeAll.scad>;

Making a simple plate

To make a plate using the included dimensions and devices, include the required libraries and use the WallPlate() module.

    use <WallPlate/WallPlate_Generator.scad>;
    use <WallPlate/WallPlate_Decora.scad>;
    use <WallPlate/WallPlate_Duplex.scad>;
    
    WallPlate(){
        Decora();
        Decora();
        Duplex();
    }

To change the order of the devices on the plate, just change their order in the list.

    WallPlate(){
        Decora();
        Duplex();
        Decora();
    }

Changing the plate size

The WallPlate() module takes only one parameter, dimensions, which is a defined vector of 6 values. (See the DimensionsVector() module.) There are four predefined sizes, each returned by a "getter function".

DefaultStandardDimensions()
DefaultMidwayDimensions()
DefaultOversizeDimensions()
DefaultJumboDimensions()

"Standard" dimensions is the default. To use any of the others, they can be passed to WallPlate().

    WallPlate(DefaultOversizeDimensions()){
        Decora();
        Decora();
        Duplex();
    }

Most of the other modules in this library need to have dimensions defined either by passing it as a parameter, or more often because the global variable $dimensions is set to a dimensions vector. It is through $dimensions that WallPlate() passes dimensions to the child modules drawing the devices. The following expressions will produce the same output as above.

    $dimensions = DefaultOversizeDimensions();
    WallPlate(){
        Decora();
        Decora();
        Duplex();
    }

Other examples

This repository includes the file WallPlate_Examples.scad which has several examples of using different modules. Comment and un-comment out the sections or cut-n-paste them onto the OpenSCAD editor.

Libraries and their modules

Plate dimensions, standard and otherwise

Included device modules

Defining new devices

Known Bugs

Documentation needs to be finished.

Version

$Revision$
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Copyright

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sjaveed / WallPlate