Notes for PuzzleSolver3D Users

BURRTOOLS was initially very much based on PUZZLESOLVER3D by André van Kammen but, by now has diverged quite a bit from that. We strongly advise you to read this user guide since there are some features in BURRTOOLS that work somewhat differently to their counterparts in PUZZLESOLVER3D and there are also a lot of functions that PUZZLESOLVER3D doesn't have. Below are the most prominent differences that need your attention:

• BURRTOOLS doesn't handle holes automatically as PUZZLESOLVER3D does. This may at first sound like a disadvantage but in fact it isn't. Unless you select 'Outer limits of result must be filled' on the solve tab, PUZZLESOLVER3D treats all cubes of the target shape as cubes that might be filled but don't need to be. But knowing which cubes must be filled speeds up the search process. The more there are of these (as compared to the total number of cubes), the faster the solver will run, as fewer possibilities are left to test. BURRTOOLS requires you to specify exactly which cubes in the result shape must be filled and which ones may be empty.

• The BURRTOOLS solver doesn't automatically detect multiple identical pieces. You need to specify if a piece is used more than once. If you just copy them the way you do in PUZZLESOLVER3D the program will find way too many solutions. For example, with Bruce Love's LOVELY 18 PIECE BURR it will find nearly 40,000,000 times as many solutions as there really are. So be careful.

• BURRTOOLS allows you to define multiple problems in a single session. So you can, for example, save all the SOMA CUBE (Piet Hein) problems within one single file.

• BURRTOOLS has no limits to the number and size of pieces. You can have as many pieces as you want and they are not confined to a grid of 24x24x24.

• There is no limit to the number of possible positions for the pieces. So BURRTOOLS won't stop and complain about too many placements. As long as your computer has sufficient memory the program will merrily continue working — even if it would take longer than the universe exists — to complete the search.

• BURRTOOLS supports other spacegrids besides the cube space supported by PUZZLESOLVER3D. This allows the design and analysis of completely new puzzles.

• BURRTOOLS knows piece ranges, which enables you to search for puzzles and not just solve them.

Importing PUZZLESOLVER3D files

BURRTOOLS has capabilities for importing PUZZLESOLVER3D files. So there's no need to redo your designs from scratch, although some post-editing may be required because of the differences in handling duplicates of pieces and holes in the puzzle.

There are 2 possibilities for the holes. Depending on whether the option ``Fill outer Cubes'' is enabled or not when you solve the puzzle with PUZZLESOLVER3D, you must either make the inner cubes of the result shape or the whole shape variable if you want to get the same results with BURRTOOLS. This can be done with the tools described in section Constraining Tools. With these tools you can make a shapes inner or outer cubes variable.

The duplicate pieces are handled automatically. BURRTOOLS adds all shapes to the new puzzle and marks the duplicates. The unused shapes are marked as unused and can be deleted if they are not required.