jaredjennings
commented
6 years ago @dfenn, welcome! The height is adjusted in things/key-place.scad in the KeyPlace and ThumbPlace modules. Since it's raw OpenSCAD code, if you adjust it while you have dactyl-top-right-all.scad open in OpenSCAD, you'll see the changes immediately.
For the marshmallow part, first you would need to make the sides not go all the way around the keyboard, and then you'd have to figure out how to split the resultant sides in pieces and how to attach them.
The sides are defined in sides.clj; right at the end, sides-right is defined as a closed sides object (last argument true) whose, ah, shall we say points, are around-edge. You probably want to make a copy of :around-edge, which is in layout.clj's :y-and-b layout, and call it :sides-exist-at or something. (layouts was supposed to be a way to define multiple sibling keyboards, e.g., different sizes, and choose one to render. That has not happened yet. See #37 and #38.) Below the def layouts, around line 100, are a bunch of mentions of chosen-layout. That's how the key :around-edge in the :y-and-b layout becomes the global variable around-edge. So add a new def there for sides-exist-at. Now make sides-right at the end of sides.clj use sides-exist-at instead of around-edge, and pass false as the last parameter because your sides shape is no longer closed.
To change how the sides are split into pieces, change :sides-partitions in layout.clj (see output file splits-right.scad for the results of your changes), and change :sides-slice-joints, immediately following, to match.
The sides are glued to the frame using the :sides-frame-joints. Some of these will no longer join the frame to anything once you have removed the front of the thumb, so you'll have to change them.
All of these things are specified using a family of rather compact notations. The somewhat exact meaning of the :sides-slice-joints notation, for one, is in the docstring of intersects-from-notation in sides_pieces.clj. :around-edges notation eventually gets passed to sides-place-fns, and is documented there.
Generally, though, k means key-place, and t means thumb-place. On the right side of the keyboard, which is the primary one modelled, k column numbers (-1 through 5 inclusive, see :columns-pieces) go up as you go to the right (aka east), and row numbers (0 through 4 inclusive, see :rows) go up as you move away from the user (aka north). t column numbers (0 through 2 inclusive) go up as you go to the left, and row numbers (-1 through 1 inclusive) go up as you move away from the user. The details, like [:n :k 3 2] or [:w-of-k 3 2], are modifications of those places on the keyboard, inexpertly specified.
Hope this helps; please ask more questions.
(You know, looking at it from the top, you might want to shave some of the marshmallow off of the near right corner too... hmm.)
dfenn
I'm interested in how you've split this up into pieces. I have a 3D printer with a small printing volume, so the only way I'd be able to print it would be in pieces.
I'd like to combine a Dactyl with the RollerMouse Red (https://www.contourdesign.com/product/rollermouse-red/). To do that, I think the roller would have to butt pretty close up against the thumb cluster, so that the keyboard wouldn't be too far away.
I think that to do that, it would be necessary to remove the marshmallow part on the front edge, and the height may have to be adjusted. I've looked through the source files, but I'm not sure where to start to accomplish these.
Can you give me any pointers about how I might accomplish that?
Thanks!