Catan 5-6 Player Box Organizer

Designed for use with my tile frames and edges. I printed these nice parts for the board and now the factory box insert no longer fit, I wanted fancy trays for the player pieces, and of course the rest of the box then had to match... several days of FreeCAD and meters of filament later, here we are.

Works with my own set (4th-edition Settlers of Catan) and probably others, though your box size may vary, with the 5-6 player expansion added in.

Printing

Print as-is, no supports required. I freely mixed PLA, PLA+, and PETG because that's what I had around. I printed all of my removable trays / lids with fuzzy skin around the outside faces, which (I think) provides a nice feel for the player-handled bits.

Parts (and pictured filament):

• Hex tray (green PLA+)

  • Holds the hex frames, with hexes inside them

• Edges tray (green PLA+)

  • Holds all the edges needed for a 5-6 player game

• "Misc." box tray (olive matte PETG)

  • Card trays below, misc. above

• Card Tray x2 (gray PETG)

  • Print as-is. No supports needed, if you can handle the bridges on the lower diagonals.

  • If you like overhang slopes instead of bridges, these can be printed "bottom-up" instead of "back-to-front".

• "Robber/Misc." Lid (speckled PLA)

• "Robber/Misc." Tray (speckled PLA)

• Player Lid x6 (various colors of PETG / don't-have-Brown-so-it's-Brick-Red PLA)

  • The retaining tabs have built-in supports which snap off after printing, so no need to add more.

• Player Tray x6 (PLA / PETG)

• Bottom filler (some chipboard / cardboard / whatever)

Usage

The card tray is designed to snap apart, and can be used with the cards either standing up or lying flat. To store them, put half the cards face-to-face with the other half and snap them together (see .gif). Plenty of room for all the cards.

Player trays need to have the "cheat sheet" inserted into them. The fit might be tight, but they're designed to stay put once inserted. Any compartment on the player trays is large enough to hold all the parts of a given type, so it doesn't matter which order your cities / roads / settlements end up in: just lay your buildings on their sides.

The player trays fit nicely stacked in one side above the edge tray: there's a gap left there on purpose, to provide your fingers enough room to actually get them out again. They may slide around a bit during storage, but they won't go anywhere.

The "Robber / Misc." tray holds the robber, dice, number pips, and the Road / Army placards.

Stored as pictured, with the rules sheet and lid on top, the box can be tossed around / picked up / jostled / stored in just about any orientation, without any pieces going astray.

Box Geometry

From my own experience, most of the similar editions I've seen will use compatible box sizes, but I'm not certain. If needed, the hex tray and misc. tray both have thin sections on the bottom that should be easy to trim or stretch to the needed size.

My game box had an 18mm gap vertically, and this was too big a volume to just print a big rectangle to fill it. I super-glued in some chipboard edges and cut a rectangle to cover it up: as a bonus, this is more than enough space to store my old edge pieces along with some spare hex frames in case something breaks. You can do the same-or-similar by cutting up some old filament boxes, cereal boxes, etc.

This page is immensely helpful for identifying which version of Catan you're using, if you need to find out.