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Dice, boxes and nets of solids
Dice with your own numbers, words, pictures or photos, cuboid, pyramid, tetrahedron and octahedron and a gift box with lid. In your measurements as a PDF, with cut, fold and glue lines, a check line and instructions.
3 to 14 cm. As one piece, a die fits on A4 up to 6 cm and on A3 up to 9 cm.
Opposite sides add up to 7, like on a store-bought die.
At most 40 characters per face. Long words are set smaller, very long ones are split. Opposite each other are 1 and 6, 2 and 5, 3 and 4.
50 simple pictures that the tool draws itself. Opposite each other are 1 and 6, 2 and 5, 3 and 4.
Each photo is cropped to a square from the center. Face 1 is the top, 6 the bottom.
This much room there is inside. Length and width 2 to 30 cm, height 1 to 20 cm.
Lid: 1 cm up to the height of the box. This is how far it reaches down over the box. Any lower, the glue tabs at the corners would have no room.
Allowance: 0 to 10 mm. The lid is this much longer and wider inside than the box, so it fits over paper and glue. 2 mm is a starting value for construction paper, more for thick card. Ideally try it once with your paper.
At most 60 characters, as large as the lid allows. Leave empty for a blank lid.
Six rectangles: length, width and height.
Each measurement 2 to 30 cm.
Blank faces for painting.
1 to 30, all the same. Small nets share a sheet.
A3 only if your printer can do it. Each net stays in one piece and is not split across several sheets.
Very small type is always filled, otherwise you cannot read it.
One page with materials and steps, with sketches. After sheet 1: right after the first sheet. If you print double-sided, it then lands on the back of a template; in that case choose “At the end”.
The preview appears right away.
When printing, choose “Actual size” or “100%”, not “Fit to page”. Then check the 5 cm line at the bottom of the sheet with a ruler: if it is shorter, the measurements are off.
Your browser remembers nothing. Save measurements and words as a file on your device and load them again later. Photos are not included in the file.
Goes well with: Lantern, crown and bunting · Grid and lined paper · Math worksheets
Measurements, words and photos stay on this device. The PDF is created here in the browser, nothing is uploaded or stored.
How it works
- 01Choose a die, a box or another solid and enter the measurements in centimeters.
- 02Decide what goes on the faces. The preview shows every sheet right away.
- 03Download the PDF, print it at “Actual size”, measure the 5 cm line, cut out, fold and glue.
Lines. Solid lines are cut, dashed lines are folded, hatched areas are glue tabs. Every edge where two faces are glued together has exactly one tab. A legend is at the top of every sheet.
Die. When the die stands on face 6, all contents are upright. With pips and numbers, opposite sides add up to 7, and 1, 2, 3 run around their shared corner like on store-bought dice. A single 6 gets a dot so it does not look like a 9. Photos are cropped to a square from the center; whatever is at the edge is cut off.
Net. The tool tries all nets of the solid and takes the most familiar one that fits on the sheet (the cross for a die, the star for a pyramid). If none of those fits, it takes the smallest. For several pieces it takes the net that needs the fewest sheets and rotates nets if more fit on a sheet that way.
Solids. Pyramid with a square base: the tool calculates the slant height with Pythagoras from the height and half the base. Tetrahedron and octahedron are regular; with “Dice numbers” they become a d4 (each corner has its number, the one at the top tip counts) and a d8 (opposite faces add up to 9). The prism has an equilateral triangle as its base; the tool cannot do other triangles. Surface area and volume are shown below the preview.
Box. A box without a lid from one piece, with a tab folded inward at every corner. The lines are on the inside size; outside it gets slightly bigger by the thickness of the paper. The lid is the same shape, longer and wider inside by the allowance. If box and lid do not fit on one sheet together, they go on two sheets.
Limits. Each net stays in one piece and is not split across several sheets, so nothing has to be joined. If it does not fit, the page names the largest size that works on A4 and on A3. A die with 10 cm edges has 600 cm² of surface, more than the printable area of an A4 sheet (19 × 25.2 cm, about 479 cm²). Lanterns whose parts are split across several sheets are in the craft templates. The font is Helvetica: characters it does not know (emoji, some letters of other languages) are replaced or left out and are named at the field. How accurate the measurements turn out depends on the printer: measure the 5 cm line. The tool has not tested whether the lid allowance suits your paper; only a test print shows that.
Nothing is stored. Names and photos of children are personal data. They stay in your browser until you close the page. “Save as file” creates a JSON file with measurements and words on your device, without photos. Values a field does not accept (a number outside the limits, a word that is too long) are not included; the message after saving names them. “Load from file” reads it back in; a file from another tool or with nonsensical values is rejected, and everything stays as it was.