With my family getting together and playing Catan a lot more, I wanted to put my design and 3D printing skills to the test and create a board we could use each time we play. As with all my previous work in the field of 3D printing, I wanted whatever I made to be both time and waste efficient while still looking great. Multicolor 3D printing can generate a lot of waste, and I like to avoid that as much as possible. Something else I wanted to add into the equation was the use of magnets on the game board as a way to easy move and change game pieces around.

The first step was to work out the precise measurements for this board. To do that, I made use of calipers on the original Catan pieces and used those as a baseline on how to size everything. For this process, I made use of Fusion 360 to ensure everything was sized out perfectly. After that, for the more free flowing and creative pieces, I simply transferred over the measured out models into Blender to make use of freeform 3D modeling. Each piece went through about two to three test phases until they were finalized and completed.

One of the core ideas behind this design was making the hex base and games tile separate so they could easily be moved to remake the board. If you’ve ever played Catan before, you may understand just how hard it can be to move all the tiles around and their associated numbers to create a new play experience, so I worked to solve this issue with my version. Overall, it works incredibly well in this regard, and you can set up a new game in a matter of a few minutes with no difficulty.

By making even the base magnet, it makes it easy to also expand the board for 5-6 players, add on one of the map expansions, or change around the layout for one of the map specific challenges.

Once I had completed my work, I did not wish to keep this to myself, as I figured other people who enjoy Catan would like to use it as well, so I uploaded it online. It has seen much success since then, and I’m happy to know people are enjoying such a good game using my design.