Thingiverse Alternative poll on Reddit

Fabster.com Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
[snip]
> Iajos this is exactly what our site does, its a
> standalone public repository that allows people to
> share their 3d files, we are the same people
> behind the 3d Printing and Physibles facebook
> group. Its free to upload and free to download,
> with comments and likes.
>
> Regards
> Fabster.com
I am busy with real life for right now but does your site have the abilty to look at the models in 3d like Thingiverse did(does?)? Many people want that functionality as I remember that being up there on the wants and likes about Makerverse, errr Thingiverse.

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_______
I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

> does your site have the abilty to look at the models in
> 3d like Thingiverse did(does?)?

Yes!

We feel that our platform is a level playing field, almost all other platforms are owned by printing companies and we arent. Anyone can join us and contribute, we build fabster because we love 3d Printing and we started development long before Makerbot was sold. Our goal was to create a platform which allowed all printer manufacturers to have a central independant source, we have only just launched and have attracted some pretty major names in the industry!

We thought it would be nice to show people other 3d printers in the market and give them the ability to directly link their website. We also thought it would be cool to show everyone what can be achieved by 3d printing, everything from 3d printing nano technologies to 3d printing cars listed in the products section.

again for people wishing to know more about us click here

[3dprintingindustry.com]

[fabster.com]

Before I discovered the wonderful world of DIY RepRap I was checking out the long list of 3D printers becoming available commercially, and a few of the small RepRap-based startups coming off of Kickstarter. My initial excitement with 3D printing came from learning about online services that could print designs of any complexity in powder printers, and although of course now RepRap can accomplish similar feats with clever slicing and PVA support material, it was the wide open potential of 3D printing that got me excited about the technology, which is advancing at a rapid pace, and which is set to commercially outstrip the open source community, but contribute back lots of new technologies in the process, especially the small startups who are creating their own firmware and unique configurations, such as Makibox and OpenBeam Trevor's DeltaBot work.

Today I find it most convenient to fork things at GitHub (which if you didn't know, now has a very nice browser-based STL viewer) and post a page about it at Thingiverse. I posted some of my designs on Shapeways for fun, even though the items would print solid and are therefore very, very expensive to order. I'd be open to any other sites that want to capitalize on open format 3D printing, but for the moment Thingiverse really does make a great tool for centrally locating media, exported STLs, the latest SCADs, and even YouTube videos. It helps in many ways that the site is connected to a commercial enterprise, and that it attracts a great number of people new to 3D printing. I get asked naive questions that make me think about my designs, and I don't feel stupid asking newbie questions about others' designs. Not only are there 3D printing enthusiasts, but artists. designers, electronics people, programmers like myself, and a broader spectrum of users than we find either in pure commercial spaces like Etsy, or in pure developer spaces like Github.

I just take them all as tools. Github is the best tool for collaborating on code-level work, where keeping a change history, tracking issues, and being able to merge patches is important. Thingiverse encourages me to think in terms of presenting designs and methods for those who might be new to using 3D printers. If there are other places where sch a diversity of talent convenes, I would love to find out more about it.

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|
| Lead Developer of Marlin Firmware
| Help support my work at Patreon and Elsewhere.
|

@fabster: I clicked on a couple objects on fabster.com. None of them had a "download" button. All I see is "website", that takes me to shapeways and asks for $30. The objects are called products, and show availability. Why would an object in a free repository of objects would do that?

Attached is a screenshot. Maybe you can show me what I'm missing.

You say you are not part of a 3d printer company. But obviously you are attached to some company. So what's the difference? It doesn't look like your website has an open source logo on it either. 100% free to use and open source are very different concepts, at least in my opinion.

Maybe you want to register an account here while you're at it.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2013 10:40AM by lajos.

@lajos

Registered

ok Fabster is divided into the following

Physibles - is the repository for 3d files, you can upload/download files for free under CC.

Products - the idea behind products was that people can create a portfolio of their 3d prints to show the world what they are printing and link directly to their website, be it makers or professional 3d print services. We have members such as nanoscribe who create nano prints [www.fabster.com] or WithinLab who create 3d printed engines and parts for spaceships [www.fabster.com] you cant buy nanoscribe items but Fabster.com is built to show the broad uses of 3d printing. Recently there was a lot of media attention about 3d printing liquid metal, Prof Michael Dickey himself who headed the research submitted the printing liquid metal to our site. Joshua Harker, Dizingof, Todd Blatt have linked their items so you can either download them via the physible section for free or if its a physical object, a direct link where to buy, or just to show who is behind the technology. So if you are a maker using a home 3d printer or a professional printing service you can use our site to show what you print.

3d Printers - Our goal is to show as many 3d printers as possible so that people are aware of the many brands that exist including the smaller manufacturers who dont have as much advertising power as the commercial printers. This is where i'd love reprap to be apart of fabster.

Software - In the next month we will be listing cloud platforms that are free.

Our site is 100% free, I hope this gives you a better idea of what our site does, in the next few months we will be adding some videos so people better understand our platform. We are open to updating our platform to work with makers, we have already modified our T&C and have added some extra features requested by users.

We are willing to work with you guys, reprap is a great community and if we can be an extension of that then it will be our honor.

Regards
Peter Sayers

the work-a-holic

P.S. Please if you have any other questions or points you would like to raise, ask away

Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2013 12:36PM by Fabster.com.

Quote
MattMoses
Here's a start at an impartial alphabetical list:

3dhacker
bld3r
Cubehero
FAB Fabbers
Fabster
Githubiverse
Grab Cad
Homeprototypes
Pirate Bay Physibles
Shapeways
Tangible Bytes
Thingiverse

Here's one that inexplicably does not get mentioned, ever: YouMagine by Ultimaker.

It resembles a lot an older version of Thingiverse. They've got an STL viewer, but it does not always work. I don't understand why they don't publicize their site. One thing, it's kind of slow for me in North America.

I've looked at a couple of these sites wondering if there's a nice alternative to thingiverse.

I looked at fabster.com and initially had the same problem of "where are the stl models / download links". With the separate physibles/products/software/3d printers sections it feels more like a shopping mall than a community wanting to share models. Clicking on the physibles link to narrow things down shows that there are only like 20 models.

I really like the look of cubehero.com -- nice and simple UI, focusing on sharing free CC models, and it looks like it has decent versioning using GIT under the hood that the geeks can access directly, but out of the way for non-geeks. In order to develop a community it definitely needs some kind of commenting system to encourage the social aspect, questions/answers etc, plus some way to view the newest things that people are uploading / printing in order to give people a reason to keep coming back.

Tell you the first thing I hated in the plethora of changes that were soon to come on Thingiverse and that was the change to Discus. The old messaging system seemed so much closer to a community instead of the worl wide facebook style.

So, I agree these sites do need a community that can message each other leaving threads for comments but Discus is the devil as far as I am concerned.

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_______
I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

Quote
MattMoses
For awhile there was a site called physibleexchange.com, but now it looks like it has turned into an unrelated blog. Anyone know what happened to that one?

Apparently physibleexchange turned into Thing-a-ma-Print. I guess those guys don't read this forum...

Here's an updated impartial alphabetical list!

1. 3dhacker
2. bld3r
3. Cubehero
4. FAB Fabbers
5. Fabster
6. Githubiverse
7. Grab Cad
8. Homeprototypes
9. Pirate Bay Physibles
10. Shapeways
11. Tangible Bytes
12. Thing-a-ma-print
13. Thingiverse
14. YouMagine

There are quite a few additional sites listed in jd_3d's post on reddit. Here's an updated list:

1.  3dburrito
2.  3dhacker
3.  3DLT
4.  3dprintingmodel
5.  Azavy
6.  bld3r
7.  CG Trader
8.  Createthis
9.  Cubehero
10. Cubify
11. Cuboyo
12. FAB Fabbers
13. Fabster
14. Github
15. Githubiverse
16. Google SketchUp 3D Warehouse
17. Grab Cad
18. Grain3d
19. Homeprototypes
20. Layerbylayer
21. Pirate Bay Physibles
22. Ponoko
23. RepRap Wiki 
24. Shapeways
25. Tangible Bytes
26. Thing-a-ma-print
27. Thingiverse
28. Turbosquid
29. YouMagine

Is there really a shortage of alternatives to Thingiverse?

Note: Some of these sites are pay-to-download, but even most of the pay-to-download sites seem to allow an uploader to set the cost of their item to "free" or $0.00.

>

Quote
MattMoses
> For awhile there was a site called
> physibleexchange.com, but now it looks like it has
> turned into an unrelated blog. Anyone know what
> happened to that one?
>

Hi. I am one of the crators of [thingamaprint.com] (PhysibleExchange). We had many complaints about the word 'physible' and decided to change the name. We haven't done too much advertising, mostly just talking about the site on Reddit. That's probably why you didn't know about the name change. Our experience so far has been that people complain a lot about a thingiverse alternative, but when push comes to shove, nobody is contributing to the content of the alternative sites. Thus we are left with the classic user/content bootstrap problem.

What is preventing people from fully getting on board with an alternative site? I think we properly addressed the content ownership and attribution problem in our TOS. Are there features you need first? Is it just because there's not enough content yet? Should we scrape thingiverse for content (with proper attribution and licensing)? Thus far, we have thought that could end in a bad response from the community, so we avoided it. What do we need to do to actually get people contributing quality content?

How have you not included MyMiniFactory.com in that list? It's easily better than the majority of that list...

Updated!

1.  3dburrito
2.  3dhacker
3.  3DLT
4.  3dprintingmodel
5.  Azavy
6.  bld3r
7.  CG Trader
8.  Createthis
9.  Cubehero
10. Cubify
11. Cuboyo
12. FAB Fabbers
13. Fabster
14. Github
15. Githubiverse
16. Google SketchUp 3D Warehouse
17. Grab Cad
18. Grain3d
19. Homeprototypes
20. Layerbylayer
21. MyMiniFactory
22. Pirate Bay Physibles
23. Ponoko
24. RepRap Wiki 
25. Shapeways
26. Tangible Bytes
27. Thing-a-ma-print
28. Thingiverse
29. Turbosquid
30. YouMagine

Quote
JesusChrist
How have you not included MyMiniFactory.com in that list? It's easily better than the majority of that list...

And on what do you base this dubious affirmation?

The graphic design is a complete DISASTER. After 30 seconds my eyes started to bleed. We only see one single picture (non zoomable) for an object, the part or set of parts are not shown. Needless to say, no STL viewer. And the third strike: you need to register to get a download link sent to you. Download link? Really?

Oh, and there's no way to leave comments...

That site would be at the very bottom of my list.

Last nail on the coffin, from the "HOW TO DOWNLOAD ?" link, because, yep, you need instructions to download from that website!

Quote
MyMiniFactory
At registration you will have the possibility to download for free 5 objetcs per month ; you will be able to receive further credits by sending us some feedback and pictures of the objects you have printed.

http://reprap.org/wiki/Printable_part_sources

I thought it would be nice to get this list on a RepRap.org wiki page where we can start listing and sorting the huge amount of part repositories that have been starting lately. Once the cells are filled in, the categories can be sorted for quickly checking out repositories that fit your needs.

I've only just started with a table of the current list from this thread. Please feel free to start filling in data cells if you've used any of the listed sites.

Also, if anyone has more data categories to add, please do so. I will be adding a list of the categories to explain them more so please add a line there if you add a new category.

Great! It is nice to get this on the wiki. I made a few edits and additions. Everyone please feel free to add more!!

What are people's thoughts on adding links to repositories with controversial or NSFW content, such as weaponiverse, defcad, dongiverse, makerlove, etc? Would it be worth the trouble to add flags for different types of content? For example, Thingiverse allows weapon accessories and drug paraphenalia, but they (nowadays anyway) usually don't allow functional weapon components and "adult themed" objects.

In the interest of being impartial and complete, we should have links to all known repositories. However, if we have a checklist that shows every visitor exactly where to go to get their bongs and sound suppressors, it might create a negative image that would get blown out of proportion.

After checking out some of these sites, it seems like a lot of them are simply content scraped from Thingiverse, often without attribution. I remember Defcad was caught doing this a while ago (Thingiverse Scraped!).

Some examples:

Here is Richrap's paste extruder on a site called rascomras.

Here is abauer's Anchor Chain Marker on a site called shapeking.

Looks like we should screen the sites we list and make sure they don't engage in this kind of nonsense.

While we're on the topic of licenses, I've never scraped other sites for Cubehero. Obviously, I'm always looking for reasons why someone would or wouldn't host on it. Recently, the issue of licenses came up. Cubehero currently only has one type of license: CC Non-commercial. Would licensing prevent you from hosting on Cubehero? Or is it a secondary concern?

Hi Wil,

Personally, I've used Public Domain, GPL, and BSD licenses for the designs I've published. It would be nice to have those options, but having only CC Non-commercial is not a deal-breaker for me, mainly because I assume everyone is going to ignore the license anyway. Of course, it complicates things a bit if I upload something to cubehero that I've already uploaded to thingiverse as GPL, BSD, or PD and I can only choose CC Non-commercial...

At any rate, I think the main reason Cubehero and other "alternative" sites are having trouble getting users is
1) hardly anyone knows about them
2) they don't offer anything substantially different from thingiverse (unless you are part of the minority that has personal issues with thingiverse)
3) they don't have (anywhere close to) as many users as thingiverse

As Gary Hodgson puts it on the Thing Tracker site:

Quote
Gary Hodgson
Anyone wishing to build a creation-sharing service has a Catch-22 situation: people won't use the service until it's deemed popular enough, yet it won't become popular without people using it.

What can set Cubehero apart from Thingiverse? I don't think simply "not being Thinigverse" is enough for most designers. You could host content that Thingiverse doesn't want to host. You could court users that Thingiverse doesn't court (people who want to get payed for their files, for example). I don't think either of those options is really in line with what Cubehero is about...

Here's two ideas:
1) you could be an early adopter for the Thing Tracker Network protocol (just because it's cool)
2) you could make some sort of "promise to the open source community" that you won't "sell out" Perhaps this could be done by setting up a non-profit and having some sort of official mission statement along the lines of "Cubehero is a non-profit 3D design library that is free to use and will never be affiliated with a for-profit company."

I added some info on the wiki list [reprap.org]

New parts repository: Parametric Parts proposes as its name suggests parametric parts. Instead of OpenSCAD they are based on CadQuery, an open source web-based app built on FreeCAD and Open Cascade, a real CAD kernel. So models can be exported to STEP as well as STL.

here's a sample part: [parametricparts.com]

And models are viewed in a 3D viewer, which is cool.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2013 01:10AM by NormandC.

Matt,

Thanks for the feeback! I just released support for all six CC licenses, and will add support for some of the other licenses as well. Technically, you can add the license files by uploading it, but people seem to like a web interface. So now, you shouldn't have problems with conflicting license types.

Quote
MattMoses
At any rate, I think the main reason Cubehero and other "alternative" sites are having trouble getting users is
1) hardly anyone knows about them
2) they don't offer anything substantially different from thingiverse (unless you are part of the minority that has personal issues with thingiverse)
3) they don't have (anywhere close to) as many users as thingiverse

Right now, the plan to reach users is to keep releasing benefits and tell people about it. I have other ideas about how to reach more people. However, fundamentally, I still haven't found exactly the gamechanger that you guys need over thingiverse. Once I get that, I figured you guys would help spread the word and tell others. So far, my vision is that it's hard to work on hardware projects together, and I'm working towards being able to submit changes and merging them into a project. What do you guys think? Is that something that you need or want?

Besides you, only one other person has mentioned the Thing Tracker Network. Is it really that important to people? If a lot of you keep requesting it (like those of you requesting better search and browsing), it'll get done. But I don't really hear people harping on me about it. People don't ask for it, because it doesn't seem to have any immediate tangible benefit to the end user.

To your other point, perhaps I've not been good about communicating Cubehero's values and intent, so I'll think about that some more. Thanks!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2013 07:00PM by iamwil.

As per my Compopoly post, how about having an 'Internet of wants' on CubeHero?

People could add their names to 3d printer functionality or designs they would like to see eg.

Everyday needs
1. Print my dinner
a. Printing carbs
wanted by: Jane Scott
Paul Williams
b. Printing veg.
c. Printing meat.
2. Increase my income
a. Selling your designs
3. Reusing my trash
a. Filament extrusion

Everyday wants
1. Make my holidays more enjoyable.

Future dreams (not invented yet)
1. Live on a self sufficient luxury yacht


Senake

Thanks for the new license options, Wil. Especially Public Domain - that's my favorite one.

Actually, my very favorite open source license of all time is the WTFPL but I don't expect you to add that one to cubehero!

Regarding Thing Tracker Network - I still don't fully understand how it is supposed to work. I am guessing someone, somewhere has to build and maintain the tracker, but I don't know. Given the proliferation of object sharing sites, it seems like the next step would be an "object sharing sharing site" or meta-site or whatever it should be called. But anyway, getting in on the ground level with it might be beneficial.

MattMoses Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for the new license options, Wil.
> Especially Public Domain - that's my favorite one.
>
>
> Actually, my very favorite open source license of
> all time is the
> WTFPL but I don't
> expect you to add that one to cubehero!
That is basically what the Chinese have been doing, lol.

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I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

For anyone interested, recent discussion on Hackaday about this: The problem of Thingiverse.

MattMoses Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For anyone interested, recent discussion on
> Hackaday about this:
> [url=http://hackaday.com/2013/10/02/3d-printering-
> the-problem-of-thingiverse/]The problem of
> Thingiverse[/url].

Very nice story and I haven't used Makerbotiverse since the switch over from a cool site to the dung hole it is now.

Thanks for posting about the article.

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I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

@mattmoses: we can add WTFPL if more people desire. I'm not joking haha. We're interested in being community lead.

@dark alchemist: thanks for the hat tip of "what about 3dhacker" on this forum.

@normandc: should we PM you so 3dhacker can further fill our entry in the "reprap printable part sources" list.

To all, 3dhacker is not a thingiverse alternative really. We're not interested in being a swimming pool for all but a "niche site" for having fun in 3D. If you're into 3dhacker, great, if not, use Thingiverse as it's backed by a corporation and will have tons of whistles to blow on. (Anyone laughing? Thought that was funny lol. It also feels dirty to support them after using their open source gear that got closed. Many may have never felt that or care. I personally do.)

Additionally, 3dhacker will grow as it's user base grows. We want 3dhacker to develop more, be deeply community lead, and recognize help along the way. 3dhacker is free, has many BIG FAT DOWNLOAD buttons, has a commenting system that allows the owner of the page to agree/disagree to show the comment, has a blog for all to use, has a forum for all to use, has all the CC attribution necessary, shows categories easily so any person on Earth doesn't need to "feel helpless" to use the site, we don't advertise, and lastly we desire to help out 3rd world countries because smiles over there are 10 times more amazing! (For those who have created smiles too or enjoy it, here is our lasest help outside the US: [www.youtube.com] )

Enjoy what you enjoy and we would love to get feedback on one thing. Should the site have no "license stuff" and be a place for "only free things" under the WTFPL license? It would be under a similar license without the word "f**K" because future browsers and browser plugins for some cultural groups might block websites with a "vocabulary word" of this nature. (I personally want a site that is totally free because IP is so boring and restrictive. That's my personal opinion though and the community has not asked for it. Just an idea.)

Happy printing and all comments welcome.

Here is a link of the Prusa i3 on 3dhacker. Please let us know how to improve the experience of this BOM.

[www.3dhacker.com]