At the start of the month we said VAULT is coming to the bench: Ussa Design's modular stacking toolbox, which we'll print here under Ussa's commercial license. This week the files arrived. The first module isn't on sale yet, but there's something you can try today: the VAULT builder, open now in beta.
It works like our case builder. You stack a VAULT tower in 3D, at its real size, on the same workbench beside the same coffee mug. Open the drawers, change the colors, and see every part it takes. The one thing you can't do yet is buy it.
Stack a tower
Start with a width, S, M, L or XL, and a depth, from 3 to 7 of our 42 mm squares. The bottom layer sets both for the whole tower. Then add layers: drawer modules or lidded boxes, one, two or four floors tall. A tall drawer module can be split into shorter drawers, so a four-floor module can be one deep drawer, four shallow ones, or a mix.
The wide modules have tricks of their own. On an L you can stack two S modules side by side, and on an XL an S beside an M, because Ussa sized them to line up. Any layer can be moved up or down the stack or taken off, and the tower rebuilds as you go.
Finish it
Top it with a roof: a flat Table roof, a Grid roof, a Bowl roof for loose parts, an Under-table mount, or, on the wide towers, the Heavyweight roof with its bar handle. Underneath, leave it on the bench, put it on wheels with a foot at the front, or hang it on the wall. Add a carry handle, pegboard panels across the back for IKEA Skadis hooks or Ussa's own, and a label on every drawer front.
The body and the fronts each come in our four colors, picked separately. The tower at the top of this post is Army Green with Black fronts. The one below is Black with Burnt Orange.
Open it up
Click a drawer and it slides out. Click a lidded box and its lid swings up. Open all pulls everything out at once, and the camera steps back so the whole open tower stays on screen.
Inside, the drawers and lidded boxes can be left empty or fitted out: a Gridfinity baseplate, Ussa's printed dividers in a few layouts, or our own Bay bins. The Bays are the same models as in the case builder, set on the baseplate. They're too tall for a one-floor drawer, so the builder only offers them in two-floor drawers and up.
Sizes shows the tower's outside measurements. Under the colors, a parts list counts every module, drawer, roof and divider your tower needs. The link in your address bar keeps your build, so you can come back to it or send it to someone.
How we made it
The models on the page come from Ussa Design's own files, cut down to something a phone can load. The originals are made for printing, not for looking at: one small tower runs to nearly five million triangles. On the page, it's a small fraction of that.
The files are also laid out for a print bed, not a tower. Modules are modelled upside down, some parts are turned at an angle so they fit the bed, and nothing says where a part goes. So we worked out, part by part, how each one sits in a tower, stood it the right way up, and checked the result by stacking test towers in every width and depth. A few files were too tangled to simplify at all. Those we rebuilt from their outside surface, the way you'd see them on a shelf.
The rules for what stacks on what are Ussa's. Their site has a flat, 2D stack planner, and we took its rules, not its code: which widths go on which, and how a drawer front can be split. Ours adds the third dimension, the depths, roofs and colors, and drawers that open.
What we left out matters too. The page shows the outside of each part and none of the mechanism: no locks, runners, hinges or springs. The knob on each drawer is a stand-in of our own, black with a brass bar, and the latches are plain blocks. The models are for display only.
Why it's a beta
Nothing in the builder is for sale yet. Its cart button says Coming soon, and it will until two things happen. Our license has to be confirmed: we're waiting on our license number from Ussa Design, and every VAULT listing has to show it. And the modules have to be printed and checked. The first test drawer, a small one-floor S module, went on the printer this week. We'll work through the sizes from there and price each module from a real print.
Some things the builder can't do yet. Every drawer in a tower takes the same insides, and every lidded box the same; choosing them drawer by drawer comes later. When the modules go on sale, the plan is for the cart to take the whole tower in one go, the way the case builder does.
Until then, try it and tell us what's wrong. If a part looks off, something won't stack that should, or there's a drawer insert you'd want that isn't there, send us a note. The builder is on the VAULT page, under Stack your VAULT in 3D.