What is everyone’s opinions on the most “open” alternatives to http://thingiverse.com? I would like to start uploading my designs as I create them and share them but don’t want to be hopping around from service to service. I would like to find a nice open site with a good community that I can use indefinitely without having to have the same concerns that I do about the corporate backed sites.
I apologise if this has been asked before, my searches did not really return any conclusive results.
But I dream of a community-owed alternative. I have built the infrastructure for one and accumulated 30,000 models but put it on hold due to competing priorities. Considering our next move. I am convinced it has to be phone-centric or at least with APIs that phone and web apps can leverage. Ours is built with that in mind. Maybe a kickstarter or some sort of funding model would give it legs. Whatever it is, it must be simple and completely open - community friendly and available to all 3d printer companies. The open source community is going too many directions to find an alternative. Maybe it’s time to join forces and develop a viable solid alternative. Here’s hoping it becomes a reality.
-brook
The Thing Tracker Network Client I am working on aims to be a truly independent open alternative. It takes a distributed peer-to-peer approach so that no one entity (corporate or community) hosts or controls the content, and each maker can choose where and how to host their content - self-hosting, shared, or something like dropbox or github. Plus it will be easy to tailor the look of the site as one wishes. The clients will connect to form the network and provide the expected functions, such as search and browsing.
This is still a work in progress as I am doing it alongside the day job, but any opinions and feedback are welcome and will no doubt help keep me motivated to deliver something
Do you have a page that explains it all? Will clients be PC only or are phones an option? Can people write their own apps? I am sensitive to UI Are you considering slicing? If not, is moving the file to a third party slicer an option? My dream is to choose a file and move it to a slicer attached to a printer profile with default settings for the slice and printer… The file would be whisked off to the printer and either cued up or printed. Lots of moving parts, but it would reduce printing to a simple print button.
The client I am writing happens to be for a PC, but any platform could be targeted, and I expect mobile clients will be a high priority once (if?) the idea takes off. The idea is that anyone can write a client, on any platform, and interact with the network - this will hopefully foster an ecosystem of tools, apps, search engines, etc aimed at satisfying a variety of needs.
Any content can be shared on the network, and so it would be quite feasible for some form of “direct to printer” functionality to be built in.
Yeah I’m not convinced mobile app is that important. if I’m looking for something specific to print, I put down my laptop and move to my desktop, where I’ve got a good sized screen and can compaire a couple of different objects/itterations of object side by side before deciding on which one I want to try.
I think having openscad suport is far more important.
While I don’t think that comprehensive mobile device support is as important now as @Brook_Drumm does, he’s right that it will be increasingly important in the future. Mobile device support can always be improved as it becomes more important, though.
Are you considering slicing? If not, is moving the file to a third party slicer an option? My dream is to choose a file and move it to a slicer attached to a printer profile with default settings for the slice and printer… The file would be whisked off to the printer and either cued up or printed. Lots of moving parts, but it would reduce printing to a simple print button.