Made right here: a pocket for every tool, cut into a solid block or hollowed to thin walls, with finger holes, names, a stacking lip and magnet or screw holes. STL or 3MF. Every other bin is on VERTEX, our free 3D printing generators.
VERTEX Gridfinity ↗Sheet 1 of 1 · photo to part
Measured
from one
photo.
Tracer uses the sheet of paper under your tools as its ruler. Every outline comes back measured, then lay them out and make a Gridfinity bin with a pocket for each tool, a flat tray, or cut lines for foam and a laser.
Free, every file included · no sign-up · your photo never leaves your computer
Sheet 2 · the method in three views
-
01 · Lay flat
Tools on a sheet of paper
A4, Letter, A5 or A3, on a darker surface so its edges stand out. Keep tools off the paper's edge.
-
02 · Shoot from above
One photo, straight down
All four corners of the paper in the frame, in even light. The straighter you shoot, the closer it measures.
-
03 · Make it
A bin, a tray or cut lines
Lay the pockets out, add finger holes and names, and download STL or 3MF to print, or DXF and SVG to cut.
Outputs
- STL · 3MF
- A Gridfinity bin or flat tray with a pocket for every tool, ready for your slicer.
- DXF
- R12 polylines in mm. Fusion, Inventor, FreeCAD, LightBurn, a CNC.
- SVG
- True size in mm. Laser software, a drag knife, Inkscape, Illustrator.
- CSV
- Every outline's width, height and area, for planning a drawer.
Start a trace
Photo in. Drawing out.
Your drawing appears here
DRAWINGTRACE-01
SCALEFROM A4 · MM
OUTLINES0
Schedule of outlines
The photo, and the paper it found
If the green frame isn't on the paper's corners, drag each corner onto it and trace again.
Sheet 3 · make it
A bin, a tray or a foam insert
Lay the pockets out: drag one to move it, turn it with its round handle, and press Reshape to pull its edge where it should be. Add finger notches and shapes from the rail. Tools from earlier photos are under Add from the library.
Pockets cut into a solid block, on Gridfinity feet.
Lay the pockets out, then make it.
Your traced tools are kept in this browser, so a bin can hold tools from several photos.
Method
The paper is the ruler.
A photo has no scale on its own. A sheet of paper does: its size is known to the millimetre. Tracer finds the sheet, straightens it, and measures everything on it against it.
- 01Find the paper
Two ways of finding the sheet's four corners run on the photo, and the one whose straightened sheet looks most like plain paper wins. If neither finds it, you drag the corners on yourself.
- 02Straighten it
The four corners are mapped onto a perfect rectangle of the paper's size, four pixels to the millimetre. A photo taken at a slight angle is squared up; one taken at a steep angle still loses some accuracy, because the tools have height and the paper doesn't.
- 03Find each tool
The light is evened out across the sheet, then each tool is found by its colour against the paper and by the crisp line round its edge. Soft shadows are peeled off, so a shadow doesn't make a tool look bigger. Specks of dust and creases are ignored.
- 04Draw it
Each outline is fitted to the tool's edge, smoothed a little, grown by your clearance, and measured. What you download is in millimetres at true size.
A photo that measures well
- Shoot straight down from about arm's length, with the whole sheet filling most of the photo.
- Put the paper on something darker than it, so its edges are clear.
- Use soft, even light: daylight from a window, or two lamps either side. One hard light casts a shadow that can join two tools together.
- Keep tools a finger's width apart and off the paper's edge.
- Thick tools measure largest at their widest point, seen from above. If a tool has a high handle, check its size with calipers.
Tracer runs the VERTEX trace engine in your browser. Your photo isn't uploaded anywhere.
Outputs
One trace, made into anything.
Choose Foam or laser cut lines: the insert's edge, every pocket with its finger hole joined on, and the names, as DXF and SVG. Cut it on a laser or a drag knife, or print it full size and cut by hand.
Print a flat tray with the tools sunk in, or engrave the cut lines on ply or acrylic so every tool has its place. Check the file in the Lasercut vector checker first.
Lasercut checker ↗The same tracer as an HTTP API: send a photo, get outlines in millimetres back as JSON, SVG or DXF.
API docs ↗404
No such sheet.
That page isn't on Tracer. Start a trace or read the method.