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Prologue

to my mother (1950-2005)

What are BURRTOOLS? BURRTOOLS consists of two main parts. On the one hand there is a program that assembles and disassembles burr-type puzzles. That program contains a graphical user interface (GUI) which allows creating and editing puzzle definitions, solving the puzzle, and the display and animation of the solutions found. This is probably the most interesting part for most people. On the other hand there is also a C++ library that may help with the search for and design of new puzzles. This library contains all the necessary tools to write programs that do what the graphical interface does (and more).

The first part of this document describes the graphical program. It contains descriptions of all concepts and explains how to use them in the GUI program. The second section contains a description of the library and some internals. Also, some of the algorithms used are explained. This section is probably interesting only for people wanting to use the library for their own puzzle design explorations.

But first a little bit of history of this program. There are already two programs similar to BURRTOOLS can do. One is BCPBOX/GENDA written by Bill Cutler. Cutler's programs are very versatile, they even can handle space grids different from cubes. The other one is PUZZLESOLVER3D by André van Kammen. I had bought this program a while ago and have generally been quite satisfied with it. I have taken over quite some ideas from the GUI that André developed. So why another program, you might ask. Here are a few reasons:

  1. The available programs are not for LINUX, which is my operating system of choice,
  2. the available programs are binary only programs and hence it is quite hard to do more complex research or design tasks,
  3. the programs do cost money,
  4. PUZZLESOLVER3D seems to be abandoned. There hasn't been any update for quite a while, and
  5. PUZZLESOLVER3D has some nasty limits to the shape, sizes, and the number of possible placements.
Anyway, I was not completely satisfied with the available software. Then in summer 2003 a German computer magazine started a competition to write a program that counts the number of solutions to a merchandising puzzle as fast as possible. My program wasn't the fastest but it was the starting point for the BURRTOOLS.

As there are many people out there that are a lot more creative than I am and that could use a program like this to design nice puzzles, I decided to make it public and free (see www.guu.org).

I added a GUI that can work on many operating systems, including LINUX and WINDOWS. This has the disadvantage that the GUI looks a bit different from what the normal WINDOWS user is used to, so stay calm if things look a bit unusual, they behave in fact quite similar to how a normal WINDOWS-program behaves.

Lately 2 people played important roles in the development of the program. These 2 are Ronald Kint-Bruynseels and Derek Bosch. Ronald has rewritten the first part of this manual and has generally contributed lots of well organized suggestions. Derek is responsible for the OSX port of the program. Without him there would be no binary for this operating system available.

I want to thank both of them for their work. I also want to thank all the other people that have sent in bug reports, suggestions and praise. Their input is very welcome and crucial to the further development of the program.

All this work has taken many years to reach the current state, I hope it was worth it and that you have a lot of fun with the program.

Andreas Röver

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