Chess Set
A full classical-style chess set modeled in CAD, my favorite project of that semester.
// Challenges
The bishop and rook looked daunting at first. I learned a new method for cutting the bishop's slit, and my teacher showed me a shortcut for the rook that made it much faster.
// Skills Used
// Outcome
A complete classical chess set in CAD. Best part. It combined chess (which I love) with 3D design (which I was getting hooked on).
Brief
Model a complete chess set in Onshape. Six unique piece types. Pawn, rook, knight, bishop, queen, king. The style was left open, so I went classical because I like the way classical pieces look and because classical pieces have the geometric precision that makes them interesting to CAD.
Process
The pawn was the warm-up. Stack of revolved profiles. Done.
The rook came next. My first version tried to model every battlement individually, which would have worked but was going to take hours. My teacher showed me a shortcut. Cut a single battlement, then use a circular pattern to clone it around the top. Five minutes of work instead of an hour. That moment changed how I approached every CAD project from then on. Look for the pattern before you start grinding through the geometry.
The bishop was the puzzle of the set. The slit at the top is a recognizable feature, but cutting it cleanly is harder than it looks. I tried a couple of approaches that left messy edges. The method that finally worked was to sketch the slit profile as a flat rectangle, project it onto the curved surface of the piece, and extrude the cut along the surface normal. Clean slit, no jagged edges.
Knight, queen, and king were exercises in patience. The knight is the hardest piece to model classically because the horse head has no easy revolve symmetry. I built it as a series of lofted profiles plus a few small fillets to soften the transitions. The queen and king share a profile up to the crown, so I modeled them as a single base part and added the unique tops.
Skills Built
- Parametric modeling. Sketches that drive other sketches, dimensions that propagate. Once the pawn was right, scaling it to a slightly different height for the king was trivial.
- Circular patterns and surface projection. Two Onshape techniques I use constantly now.
- Lofted profiles. The knight could not be revolved or extruded alone. Lofting between sketches gave me the head shape I wanted.
- Asking for help and applying it. The rook battlement shortcut was a turning point. Knowing when to ask a teacher or classmate saves hours.
What I would do differently
I would build the set as a single parametric assembly with one master variable for piece height. Tweak the variable and every piece scales proportionally. Instead I built each piece at fixed dimensions and would have to remodel half the set to scale them all up. Future CAD projects start with the variable studio.