Comments on RepRap: Blog: Objects.RepRap.Org - Any volunteers?

The thing is that with so few RepRaps out there 'i...

2009-03-05T23:10:00.000Z

The thing is that with so few RepRaps out there 'in the wild' - very few people have need for models. Hence very few are made. Since there are no models at the site, nobody much goes there.

I think this will get better once there are hundreds of RepRaps out there rather than the (maybe) dozen or so there are now.

Also, RepRap has to get past the stage when people are building them for the fun of building them and experiments - and into the hands of people for whom it's just a means to an end.

No worries, some of us are still subscribed to the...

2009-03-03T19:06:00.000Z

No worries, some of us are still subscribed to the thread, because it's interesting :)

The site itself exists, created by Logan, at www.reprap-models.com, but as you point out, getting the models is the main problem. The site currently has a grand total of nine models.

Could just be because nobody knows about it? I dunno. That there are only two posts in the forums (both by Logan) does rather support this.

Uh sorry didn't notice the 2008

2009-03-03T13:46:00.000Z

Uh sorry didn't notice the 2008

I came across this several weeks ago but it appear...

2009-03-03T13:41:00.000Z

I came across this several weeks ago but it appears to me there's at least one community resource we may find useful to try and get more models.

Some of you may have heard of Shapeways who are a business unit of Philips research who offer commercial 3D printing services. If you haven't checked them out in a while, I've noticed that they seem to have a decent community of modelers, take a look at some of the top rated designs for example http://www.shapeways.com/gallery?page=1&sort=rating

Cream Robust material is printed using FDM so in theory anything (and perhaps more) which their software allows you to print with that material may one day be RepRappable. Of course it doesn't tell you what it looks like but it's still an interesting resource.

The one big trouble is all models I've seen do not allow copying which means there's no way we can get the models. Actually I'm not sure if we'd be able to even if they did allow copying (I'm guessing it's primarily so people can modify the models) but in any case it appears the reason all models are like that is because the feature is currently unsupported http://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=773 .

While some of the modelers are selling their models (there's an option to open a shop where I guess you get a percentage of every copy sold), I'm guessing there are some modelers who would be willing to contribute their models, worst case perhaps under a no derivatives, no commercial license since it seems to me some are more interested in the modelling then any profit they can make.

Perhaps we should reach out to modelers to contribute to us? Shapeways have a forum, http://www.shapeways.com/forum/ and I'm guessing they won't mind if we ask to see if anyone is interested in contributing to us (provided we don't try and take over their forums). I think the primary purpose of Shapeways is to help them develop and get people interested in 3D printing and they seem somewhat supportive of open source (some of their software is http://www.shapeways.com/about/open-source-support ) and I've also seen us mentioned in their blogs before.

So all we need is somewhere for them to contribute models (and a relatively simple means to do it :-) )

I agree there needs to be a separate RepRap object...

2008-02-25T19:36:26.520Z

I agree there needs to be a separate RepRap object archive, for reprap-only objects. Perhaps in the distant future, a homogenous project that lets people store all kinds of object under all kinds of license and with all kinds of attached meta-information could be created. It might even magically convert between different needs so you could download the same model of a dwarf as:

* An animated lightmapped low-poly game model, with limbs, bones, animation, texturing, normals, materials and any polygons larger than the local luxel size split in two;

* A high-res posable model for render ing;

* An untextured shaded-poly google earth model;

* A closed, volumetric 3D printing model with all 2-D planes (cloaks etc) thickened to one pixel, intersecting shapes resolved, all methes closed, and the model detail scaled to the desired print size and the resolution of the printer.

But that day is not coming soon.

I'm working on the early stages of a "user created content" MMO in which all objects will be public domain. I would *love* if my work helped RepRap. But I just can't see how anything I made would be useful to you, or vice versa.

IMHO, the Wiki way of doing things is what we want...

2008-02-22T02:02:28.107Z

IMHO, the Wiki way of doing things is what we want here.

* A means by which by uploading a model, you are forced to grant rights to the community.
* Whereby someone (anyone) can come along an fix a design flaw or add an improvement.
* A means by which every change is automatically tracked under version control so it can be backed out if it proves to be incorrect and so we have a papertrail in the event of someone accusing us of copyright violations.
* A means to write about the object (eg an instruction manual, some guidelines on how to construct it, a picture of the finished item).
* An off-the-front-page discussion area to talk about each object.
* A means to easily link to related designs and to categorize objects in several different ways.

All of those things are exactly the kind of thing we want - so a MediaWiki server makes a hell of a lot of sense.

IMHO, we have two problems with MediaWiki:

1) Security - protection from idiots. In my opinion, this can be made to run itself once the community is large enough. Vandalism and spam gets fixed pretty quickly on Wikipedia - but that's because most articles have at least a few people who have the article on their "watch list" and check up on it most days. We won't get that for a LONG time - so to start with, we need controlled access and explicitly granted permissions. MediaWiki can easily do that right out of the box.

2) 3D files need to be automatically rendered either as a set of still images or perhaps as a short movie showing the object slowly rotating. MediaWiki does something similar to that with 'SVG' files for browsers that don't support SVG rendering locally - so probably we could hack the sources to make it render 3D objects in a similar way.

Some friends and I about a year ago now created an...

2008-02-17T21:14:59.197Z

Some friends and I about a year ago now created an alpha version of a site that included all of the features you're asking for - our roadmap was very very similar to yours! We got busy with other things and development has stalled, but I'll shoot an email off to them and see what they think about putting a bit more polish on it and opening that code up to the RepRap project.

There is a subtle - but important - difference bet...

2008-02-17T21:04:36.546Z

There is a subtle - but important - difference between what Google is doing - and what RepRap needs. Google's models are 'surface models' - they contain information about the surface of the model - it's color, texture, etc - but tell you nothing about the volumetric information. Their models probably have holes in them and intersecting parts.

Hence RepRap NEEDS a 3D repository of it's own.

The only alternative might be to talk to the Wikipedia 'WikiCommons' people - for whom the storage of 3D models would probably be considered an appropriate use of their resources.

As for the Objects.RepRap.org site - the MediaWiki approach is not a bad one - but vandalism of open Wiki's is always a problem until you have enough regular users to patrol the site and revert spam quickly.

While our user base is small, Spam and general vandalism will continue to be a problem. The easiest way to shut down spammers on MediaWiki sites is to remove the ability of people to create or edit pages without creating a user ID. That's not 100% bullet-proof but it's fixed the problem on the MiniOwnersOfTexas.org Wiki that I run. If you have more sophisticated spammers who go to the trouble to create their own user ID's then consider first requiring an email confirmation before granting an account - and if that's not enough, remove the ability of users to create their own accounts - forcing them to ask the site admin person to create them.

I think the root of the problem at this point is that RepRappers with working hardware are a TINY number of people - so the rate of production of new 3D models is also tiny. We're not going to see a vast repository of 3D models until there are a vast number of RepRappers out there to generate them.

Here are a couple of links that might help you wit...

2008-02-17T20:46:00.311Z

Here are a couple of links that might help you with spam on a mediawiki. I hope you find these useful.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Anti-spam_features

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgSpamRegex

Hi folks,We here at Instructables would love to su...

2008-02-17T19:24:47.693Z

Hi folks,

We here at Instructables would love to support RepRap - we've got a few new features that would do most everything you've listed above.

I'll drop an email to the address listed above; feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Christy Canida