We’re about to describe ONE way to manage your keyguard designs.  If you are responsible for the design and management of all keyguards for an agency or school district, you might be able to take all or some of these recommendations to make your work easier and effective.

Create a Folder for Keyguard Design

You only need one copy of the keyguard designer on your PC.  You should periodically check the Printables website to ensure that you have the latest version.  Create a folder for the designer and do all your designing in that folder.  You should also place a copy of the openings_and_additions.txt file in your design folder along with the designer.  As you create your design and store the Customizer Settings for those designs as Presets, you’ll notice a third file in the folder with the same name as the designer but with the file extension “.json”.

Finally, it can be helpful to create a sub-folder just to store a copy of the basic and unedited openings_and_additions.txt file.  That way you won’t have to go online and download a new copy if you need to go back to basics.

Your design folder should look something like this:

Create separate folders for each of your designs – you can certainly group all of these folders in a higher level folder so that they’re easier to find.

In each of those separate folders you should store information you received or created regarding that keyguard.  Here are some examples:

• the keyguard data form,
• a screenshot of the app running on the target tablet,
• a copy of the SVG file you created from the screenshot,
• pictures of the app running on the target tablet in the target case,
• pictures of the mounting system for the tablet/case,
• the “padding.xlsx” file if you used it to determine padding values from the screenshot,
• the “openings_and_additions.txt” file if this is a hybrid or free-form keyguard and if you made changes to this file,
• your Customizer Settings as a text file or an exported copy of the Preset itself.
• the STL and/or gcode files for easy re-printing of the keyguard – remember that gcode files must be used on the 3D-printer for which it was originally created.

As said below, you may want to name these folders using the identifier you establish for that keyguard.

When you create or modify a keyguard design you can temporarily put the screenshot.svg file and the edited openings_and_additions.txt file into your keyguard design folder where they can be referenced by the keyguard designer.  When you’re done with your design move these files back to the folder for that keyguard if they’ve been changed.

Keep your keyguard design folder clean.

Never perform a File > Save operation from within the keyguard designer.  That’s NOT how you save your Customizer Settings.  To save the settings associated with a design you should create a Preset.

Presets are added to the .json file.  It would be tragic if you accidently deleted this file, so periodically, copy this file to a safe location – maybe on a cloud drive.  You may want to do something similar with the folders where you store the information for your individual keyguard designs.

Use IDs Consistently to Manage Your Designs

The important step in managing your keyguards is to give each of your keyguards a unique identifier.  If you’re just experimenting with a design and haven’t yet settled on a final form, assigning an ID is less important, but by the time you are delivering a keyguard to a client or student, that keyguard should have a unique ID.  This ID should go in at least two places and probably more.

The first place the ID should go is in the “Identifier” box on the keyguard data form:

[The data form is available as a DOCX or PDF.]

You may choose to add it to the name of the form itself.

The ID should contain one or more of the following items (but it must be unique):

• the therapist (initials may help to maintain privacy),
• the student or client (initials may help to maintain privacy),
• the type of tablet,
• the app,
• the configuration/vocabulary,
• the type of case,
• the date of design/issue…

• Maybe a string of letters and numbers that map to the above information in a separate document/spreadsheet/database/table:

The ID is then used to represent the keyguard specifics in all places below.

The second place the ID should be used is as the name of the computer folder where you keep electronic assets associated with this keyguard like:

The third place you should include the ID is in the subject line of any email you exchange with others about the keyguard.

The forth place you should use the ID is as the name of your design during the design process – i.e., as the Preset name.  In the OpenSCAD Customizer pane, you should use the ID as the name of the preset:

You can find more on using OpenSCAD presets here.

The fifth place you should consider recording the ID is as engraved text on the keyguard itself.  We recommend putting the ID on the underside of the keyguard rather than on the top surface so it won’t become a distraction to the user.  Of course, you can only “engrave” the ID where you have plastic wide enough for that purpose.  If your keyguard has to fit in a very narrow case opening and you can’t afford to cover some or all of any command/message bars, then it’s unlikely that you’ll have a place to put the ID.  You can, alternatively, use a marking pen to record the ID on the back of the keyguard.  That can be much easier than the steps required to add engraved text to the keyguard.

If you need to update your design at a later date, keep the original keyguard data form but create an updated version and store that along with all the other electronic assets in the folder with the ID as its name.  You can consider adding version numbers to the ID and other modified assets you create.