New site for sharing models from GitHub, and OpenSCAD in the browser

Hi

I've just put this new site online:

[www.fabfabbers.com]

It allows you to add a model from your GitHub repo, and automatically stay in sync.

Another cool feature (I hope!) is the ability to run OpenSCAD in the browser:

[www.fabfabbers.com]

I'd really be happy if anyone could try this out and let me know what they think?


Thanks

Marcos

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2013 07:14AM by marcosscriven.

Hi Marcos,

The site looks slick, and I like the openscad integration - will have to play some more.

One thing I noticed: there's no indicator that I am signed in, other than a message saying I am if I try and click the login button again. It might be useful to add an indicator or something.

Also, RSS feeds for new models, and news/updates about the site, would be really useful.

And this is only my opinion of course, but your fourth feature ("News and Reviews") doesn't sound like a good fit for the site - it would detract from it's clean and simple approach I think. I would put such things into a different sister site, or blog, with a link to it so it doesn't fill the site with noise.

Finally, this would be a superb candidate for the Thing Tracker Network (http://thingtracker.net)! There are probably things that would have to be worked out (users opting in to having their data shared etc) but I would be really interested in chatting with you about it further if it's something that interests you.

Cheers,
Gary

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garyhodgson.com/reprap | reprap.development-tracker.info | thingtracker.net

Hi Gary

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions, and I think you're probably right about the News and Review thing.

I just had a read of Thing Tracker Network - definitely very interested in having a chat about that!

Will have a look at the Google+ page, and the GitHub repo tonight.

Marcos

EDIT - And oh my goodness, you've already added a model. Would love to know if that worked as expected?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2013 04:57PM by marcosscriven.

Yup, already uploaded two. The whole process is very easy and intuitive and I had no problems.

A couple of points I thought of whilst playing:

When defining tags there is a warning that spaces are not allowed, even if I write "tag1, tag2". Having the check happen for each tag, rather than the whole string would probably make sense.

The OpenSCAD editor has crashed Chrome a few times - just a FYI as I know it's very beta stuff. I am looking forward to reading about what you have done with emscripten and asm.js!

BTW, I posted about the site on google plus (don't know if you're on there) in the 3D printing community: https://plus.google.com/u/0/106465579732448802787/posts/SJRixvL6Qoi

Are there plans to be able to interact with github via the site, e.g. create and manage projects, etc?

Awesome work!

G.

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garyhodgson.com/reprap | reprap.development-tracker.info | thingtracker.net

Another question: There doesn't appear to be a way to re-edit an openscad script once it has been generated (and I have changed the script) Loading the source code back into the editor would of course be very handy.

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garyhodgson.com/reprap | reprap.development-tracker.info | thingtracker.net

Hi Gary

Thanks for the note on Google+!

Regarding the other feedback:

- Will sort out tagging. Was planning on waiting until I had time to go the whole hog with AJAX

- OpenSCAD crashes - in what way did it crash? The whole browser tab, or just a Javascript level error? I know there are some underlying memory leaks (which also hit the native version, albeit with much more use)

- Github interaction - definitely thought about that. My concerns were time investment, if people actually wanted it. And secondly, would people bother with/trust the whole OAuth thing?

- The reopening generated scripts thing - initially I only put that there to allow people to download the STL. I suppose if asm.js gains traction, and it really becomes useful for designing stuff, then that would be a good idea. Easy to do though, so I'll put it in today


Thanks again for all the feedback.

Marcos

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2013 05:41AM by marcosscriven.

Hi Marcos,

The crashes were the entire browser tab in Chrome, but it didn't happen consistently, and it hasn't happened since. I'll try and take notes if/when it happens again.

I definitely understand what you mean about weighing up whether to invest time in implementing features! Of course my comments and suggestions are meant only as that, no pressure from me Your initial work ticks a lot of boxes though and I would certainly like to see it progress further.

Cheers,
G.

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garyhodgson.com/reprap | reprap.development-tracker.info | thingtracker.net

Hi Gary

Thanks again for your continued feedback, it's really very helpful.

I just had a fellow from Germany having issues adding a model. Turns out that a GitHub repo doesn't necessarily have to have it's README in the root dir, and if it's not in the root dir, there's no way to find out programmatically via their api: [api.github.com]. Then, on top of that, I didn't realise Django was setup to email me errors - and it was setup to send from an email address Google App Engine didn't like, and retries mean it's used my full email quota! So now noone can signup for 24 hours.

I've got some ideas to make the whole adding-from-github a lot more robust, so hopefully this part of things will be more stable.

Tonight I'm adding the ability to reaload the code from your previous generations in the OpenSCAD view.

Marcos

EDIT - Email limit sorted, signed up for PostmarkApp.com 10,000, instead of GAEs silly 100 limit.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2013 06:24PM by marcosscriven.

Hi

I've made a couple of small changes:

1) I've moved the URL for OpenSCAD to [www.fabfabbers.com] - it didn't seem to make sense being under the /models/openscad url. I've not setup a redirect as it's not as if many will miss it right now.

2) I've made it so you can reload generated models. I've drop any existing generated files (I won't be so cavalier with data generally, but as people are just testing it out hoped that would be ok - safer and less fiddly than trying to migrate to a different database table)

Note I'll be working on fixing some issues with GitHub import.

Marcos

Really nice. I put the Wallace scad file in, and it shows everything about 2300 seconds later (that's a big file that also took some long time to see on my PC). It would be a bit better if the site says that it's rendering the object or if it has finished it.

Thanks

Hi ThanhTran

Thanks for trying the site - I assume you mean this SCAD [github.com] ?

Re the progress indication - that's definitely something I need to add, so thanks for the suggestion.

If so, on Firefox 23 it runs in just 166 seconds, nearly14 times faster (see attached)

Marcos

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2013 03:51AM by marcosscriven.

Hi Marcos,

FYI, I may have caused a server error by attempting to add a fork of Nophead's Mendel90 project (it returned a 500 error midway and it seems not all folders are loaded)

Also, it raises an interesting point. I forked the repo from Nophead to see how it looks in FabFabbers, but the model appears as though attributed to me - perhaps it would be good to somehow indicate the family history so correct attribution is shown, perhaps something like "nophead/mendel90 fork by Gary Hodgson" or similar?

[www.fabfabbers.com]

Cheers,
Gary

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garyhodgson.com/reprap | reprap.development-tracker.info | thingtracker.net

Hi Gary

Yes I got an email from the server about that error and just emailed you about it. Basically, it got to about 400 of the 700 or so files, and then hit a Google App Engine limit of 60 seconds for a query. I'm going to change this to be asynchronous - so basically when you add a repo it will submit straight away, and then it will just download independently of the of the request thread.

Also, regarding the naming of the owner - yes, I will definitely implement your suggestion.

As ever, thanks for providing me with interesting use cases and ideas.

Marcos

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2013 05:56AM by marcosscriven.

Hi

I just sent the below update to people who've signed up to the site, but thought it might be of interest to people who might be interested in doing so:

1) As anyone can add any public repo to the site (even if it's not theirs), I've made it so that you can only actually edit the model if we've linked your FabFabbers username with your GitHub user name. There are various levels of access you can give to your GitHub account, but I'm only asking for the bare minimum, which is just your user details.

2) If you would like to link your FabFabbers account to your GitHub account, then just go to the add model page: [www.fabfabbers.com] and hit the link on the right

3) If you don't want to, that's absolutely fine of course - it just means you won't be able to change tags, screenshots etc. All other editing at the moment would be done directly via your Git repo anyway.


The whole reasoning behind this is that hopefully the site is useful merely as a 'view' on public repos, and there's no need really to wait for the original owner to add it (given it's public).


While I'm here, I've made a few little improvements:

1) When adding a model it will create a pretty name from the repo name. So something like My-great_model would become the title: My Great Model

2) If you add a subdirectory (say because you have one repo with several models), the subdirectory will now become the top level in FabFabbers. Also, the subdir name will be used for the model title instead of the root dir (with the same 'prettification' as above)

3) Again on subdirectories, I've found a way to determine a README in a sub dir too, so if you have one there that will be used as the description, instead of the root dir README.

4) A screenshot will automatically chosen based on size, if there are any image files in the repo.

5) If you've forked a model, it will say that in the title, as well as display the original owner.


Please do let me know of any issues, suggestions etc.

Hi

Just released a couple of little improvements to OpenSCAD in the browser : [www.fabfabbers.com]

- For models which have been uploaded to the site from GitHub, any SCAD files you open from the model page (with the little 'pencil' icon), will now correctly download any 'import' or 'use' files. As an example, I was able to build scad/atx_psu_brackets.scad on [www.fabfabbers.com] (see attached)

- I also added a progress bar, which should hopefully help give an idea something is happening.

Thanks

Marcos

Is the site itself open source? I'd love to see how you implemented this.

The site is coded in Python/Django, and hosted on Google App Engine. I'd not thought it particularly worthy of open source, as there wasn't much to see IMO.

Happy to give you any details - perhaps a blog post?

If you mean the OpenSCAD stuff, that's another matter - I had to hack about quite a bit, and I'm working to get the changes I made in a fit state to put back into OpenSCAD repo.

Marcos

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2013 04:42PM by marcosscriven.