I was recently at the Chicago Children's Museum (CCM) where they had a "Skyline" exhibit for kids that featured interactive modular building parts. Here's a couple links:
http://www.chicagochildrensmuseum.or...rience/skyline
http://www.gyroscopeinc.com/ChicagoSkyline.php
The latter link is the private contractor that created the exhibit. There's also a FAQ (http://www.chicagochildrensmuseum.org/skyline_FAQs.html) that indicates the building parts are not commercially available and the alternatives they provide seem... poor.
I've now got access to a 4x8 ShopBot and was thinking that creating some kind of modular building toy for my 6 year old would be fun. The CCM parts are mostly straight 1 1/3" x 1 1/3" square stock with holes every 1" on alternating faces. They also have some corner braces and plates with holes allowing other angles to be created. Obviously, I can't do something 100% similar on the ShopBot easily from sheet stock, since I can't create the holes on the alternate faces. I did think about just making them in the traditional, non-CNC way, but I started wondering whether other plans might exist that were for sheet stock. Anyone know of anything?
The alternative is that I create something. Making straight pieces with holes on even centers is no big issue and making plates for attaching things at 90* or other angles in the XY plane is pretty easy. The issue I'm having is finding a good way to go from XY to Z. I suppose I could just make some "L brackets," but thought I'd see if anyone else has thoughts along these lines?