Makerblock receives a gift of colored pencils from his wife. But how to carry them? A few years ago he’d have to be happy with a trusty rubber band. But this is 2011. How does he solve his problem?

“After measuring them with my trusty calipers, I found they were 7mm from flat side to flat side on a cross-section. The above design uses a “width” of 7.2mm, which has resulted in an excellent fit. Each of the pencils falls/slides easily into a vacant hexagonal slot. The printed cap could be printed by increasing the “width” of the pencils. I’ve included the OpenSCAD file for anyone to peruse. Before you try to render it, please note it uses the MCAD library of shapes for OpenSCAD to create the hexagons.”

He feeds his CAD file to his Thing-O-Matic 3D printer and out pops his solution.

He adds: “Perhaps my favorite part about this design is that when you slide these little pencils into the case, you just know this case was custom made for these ten pencils.”