How will the design catalog work?
Will it be free?
Will it have a paid section?
Can user submit designs to the free or paid section?
I also would love to know this for Glowforgeâs own materials
But wanted to say that it is very likely many people will upload designs to Thingiverse and other locations as well, if there is not a way to upload and share through Glowforge itself.
Me too. Iâm sure that we can download from Thingiverse, etc., plans that can be cut. But itâd be nice if there were a free section to the integrated catalog, with designs designed for Glowforge (e.g. with the slots that adapt to material thickness, customizable, etc.). So the same as the paid stuff, but by designers that want to share freely. Iâve published tons of designs to Thingiverse Customizer, and Iâd love to do the same for Glowforge if thereâs a way for me to publish CC âshare alikeâ or ânon-commercialâ licensed designs.
From what they have already said there will be a market place with both free and premium designs. I canât speak for them but Iâm sure that the plans they provide will also cross reference their own materials. So youâll know just what youâd need to order to
Make what you want.
Kyle: please share where you found info on the market place.
Thx
Darrius, Iâve been scouring all thing glowforge over the last few days so I canât completely remember but Iâm pretty sure they at least mentioned it in the tested video.
Iâd hope there is a free section. I put my 3d prints on thingiverse. I give all my designs for free.
Weâre in the specification stage for the catalog so feedback is very welcome. Our two priorities are:
- Letting creative people make a living selling their designs, and
- Helping Glowforge owners who want something custom, beautiful, fast.
Speaking as someone whoâs spent many frustrating hours on Thingiverse trying to find something I wanted to make, weâre looking to err on the side of âless things, but better thingsâ versus âhey everyone look I 3D scanned my elbowâ.
Speaking as someone whoâs 3D scanned his elbow and put it on Thingiverse (because hey, why not?) I realize that weâre not optimizing for freewheeling impulse sharing, which is also kind of a bummer.
Of course, anyone will be able to freely share their designs, with or without our software - you can always email a PDF to a friend. So just to be clear, weâre talking about what we highlight in a browsable catalog, not any limitations on what you can make!
Your thoughts and feedback would be most appreciated.
I think perhaps a paid and a free section for the catalog would be useful; paid could contain anything from just âcomplex designsâ to full âmake this thingâ tutorials with a listing of featured items while the free section could be the glowforge equivalent to thingiverse with items both âin developmentâ and âready to printâ listed and available for community contribution/remixes etc.
Further down the track perhaps you could offer a laser cut service similar to what 3DHubs has done for the 3D printing world; where someone can make their Glowforge available locally to print/cut designs for people and a way to pick a design from the catalog and send it to your local Glowforge owner to make.
Personally, Iâd like to see the catalog be as unconstrained as possible, because all sorts of interesting things can pop up. That being said, Thingiverse has had to deal with the flood of low-value things (e.g. designs that are unprintable). But thereâs value in letting people design and share things before they have a printer to validate with - in the early years on Thingiverse the large majority of things were âaspirationalâ designed by people who wanted to get a 3d printer. Low value, sure, but not zero value.
Iâd suggest splitting it into two collections:
- Make âthe Catalogâ be a curated collection of good things to print, with good photos, in write ups, etc., so itâs clean and professional for new buyers. Like the Thingiverse âfeaturedâ list. This could include both free and paid things - the distinction is quality, not paying.
- In parallel, have a âCommunity Catalogâ thatâs the same structure, but contains âeverythingâ. Itâd be great to have voting, etc. Everything would flood into this, and youâd pick things to promote into âthe Catalogâ. This could include both paid and free stuff.
There should be a filter to see only free stuff, searching, voting, tags or categories, etc.0
One thought - if paid stuff can go straight into âThe Catalogâ - which I am guessing might be desirable - then youâll need editorial standards, so the photos, writeup, etc., are of consistent quality. Otherwise you could get the catalog flooded with low-quality stuff that people are trying to charge for, which could really turn people off on the idea of paid stuff. IMO youâre better off, as you said, with fewer, better designs in âthe Catalogâ. Which means youâll need human beings to review and pick things to accept.
If the Catalog/Community Catalog is integrated into the software even better. Imagine, for example, that someone could draw on paper, scan it into a design to cut, and if theyâre happy with how it comes out they could click a button to upload it to share the design and a picture of the object, with the ability to add a writeup, etc., if they desire. Yes, there will be a flood of random stuff, but thatâs GOOD!
How about just a simple way to pull a design from say github for the free stuff?
I second @laird here. Give us a curated section of quality goods, and then a free-for-all section where people can upload on a whim. People with great ideas and terrible mechanics become strong community members quickly when they get the technical support they need through comments on their otherwise amazing designs.
Instead of forcing staff at glowforge to curate a catalog from the myriad uploads, you can make it a 3-tier process:
- GlowForge official - This holds only designed vetted by Glowforge to work appropriately, and the vast majority incorporate custom capabilities of the Glowforge, like designs which auto-adjust to material thickness, or are meant to be applied to curved surfaces like phones and computers.
- Wild West - Every random thing uploads here. Basically a Thingiverse which is just for lasers (it gets hard to find laser stuff over there anymore)
- Program Based Curation - Items which are also in the Wild West, but have passed some pre-determined checklist of requirements to be considered âlikely to be high qualityâ - This could be a number of users have actually printed them (easily monitored since the printing software is cloud based. Heck, printer has a camera, so you can even verify that they cut properly before counting them), or a number of users have âupvotedâ the design as functional (hmmm⌠could even only count upvotes from people who have actually made one of them)
I think thatâs too much work. Having a two-tiered setup would be fine. Glowforge curated selections, and the free-for-all; a simple rating system would let users separate the wheat from the chaff.
@jrnelson: I have always taken objection to people throwing out the âtoo much workâ argument about projects which are not their own. Because unless you have full technical proficiency in the fields required to implement the idea, and complete knowledge of all backend already in place for the project⌠you do not know exactly how much work is required.
And of course, since âtoo muchâ is already subjective, it would be nice if people said what they really mean instead: âI donât personally value thatâ
Which is totally valid. My third idea essentially boils down to a pre-selected filter in a search through the second idea. But with a few extra checkboxes and ratings which may not naturally exist, and which may indeed take a lot of work to design (but again⌠depends on the backend already in place, it could actually be insanely trivial to do most of the ideas I mentioned)
Please donât put words in my mouth. Itâs not at all that I donât value that. When I say itâs too much work, I mean that I donât think itâs a smart use of limited time that can be better spent with a more robust catalog - itâs more efficient for them to harness the crowd to do the evaluating, in my opinion.
Moreover, while Iâve obviously never had to put together a catalog of design projects, I do have a little experience with machine vision and the like, and using a camera to verify that a project was properly cut isnât going to be all that easy.
But you at least see the flaw in that argument I hope?
After all, for absolutely any laser cutter before this one, âitâs too much workâ is the exact response that would be immediately tossed to anyone saying âCan we get a camera system to do the alignment for me?â
Lots of work? Sure. Too much? Apparently not.
Having a free âstarter Collectionâ of projects that can be made from simple materials, in order to get people acquainted with the Glowforge, would be a good idea. I like the idea of limiting the collection, so it doesnât end up like the App store, having so many useless things itâs impossible to find anything useful.
Honestly I think Glowforge should take the same approach as Apple made with the App store. If itâs free, itâs free. If we pay for it, Glowforge getâs a small percentage.
This would also make sense due to the fact youâre selling at 50% discount. You wanât as much people as possible to get into it so that when you go full price youâll have a rich catalog, and people wanting it even more just because of it. Also this way they pay for the Google Cloud service which runs the whole software for us subscription free.
I think there are many good points and ideas here and itâs always easy looking from the outside at what âtheyâ should do.
I know that I am looking forward to creating designs and being able to sell them. It would be great to be able to share free stuff here but you can also do that on Thingiverse â people already do that or on Instructables or heck maybe it could exist here in the forum under its own section. The one thing I hate about Thingiverse is when I go on there searching for something specific I can hardly ever find it and I am overwhelmed with iterations of the same project or sometime just plain garbage that have nothing to do with what Iâm looking for.
I guess if your design is good and there is a possibility of making some money then maybe users will be more willing to do a good write up and take some good photos and to make sure the thing works before uploading.