A couple years back, my sister bought all the cabinets and countertops from a neighbor who was redoing their 8-year old kitchen. Sister’s cabinets were easily 35 years old. They had been talking for years about remodelling the 1953 closet-like kitchen into something more usable for a family of 8 that likes to entertain. Brother-in-law was happy to knock out walls, add a couple beams, move plumbing, etc. The hardwood cabinets and granite countertops for under $1000 was the catalyst for the move. Fitting a finite set of cabinets in a specific space was a challenge.
They had a 2D scale printoout of that part of the house, with a bunch of little bits of “cabinet” cardstock. And more bits of “granite” cardstock. They shuffled those around for weeks and weeks trying to make it fit together intelligently.
Glowforge would make a 2-d design easier, for sure. Using bits of wood or acrylic instead of cardstock would be great, and 3-d would certainly have advantages.\
EDIT: I went on a tangent. My use case wouldn’t be a catalog thing, unless we are talking couches and tables… Sorry. I’m still delighted enough with the idea to leave my comment here.
At the risk of just echoing others’ comments, I’d like to see a mix of technique and project based designs in the catalog.
@julybighouse gave a great list of suggestions for introductory tutorials that focus on techniques. These would be super helpful in getting folks up to speed on basic laser principles, so that we can start designing our own projects. I’d love to see an assortment of primers like “Living Hinges for Dummies” or “Raster & Vector Demystified”.
I’d also like a variety of project based designs, for times when I don’t want to design from scratch or reinvent the wheel. Things like storage containers, quick and easy gifts, simple-yet-useful household items, and seasonal decor.
One other thing to consider for the catalog of designs is licensing. Although Creative Commons is widely used there have been some issues recently. Also you may want to think a bit differently…
Many people are willing to share designs on a free/attribution/non-commercial basis, however as we know many people need to sell the items they produce to pay for their Glowforge.
Can I suggest that for each design that people load up to the catalog, they are to able two set two prices. Firstly, a price for personal usage, hopefully most will be free.
Secondly, a price to allow a printed item to be sold (but no ability to sell the design or remixes).
Hopefully many people will make the commercial fee low (or free), but at least they have the option to be rewarded if someone is selling items based on their hard work.
Basically it needs a paid section and a free section “for personal use only” - or the free section needs to remain here on the forum, and only people who have access to the forum can have access to the freebies.
It’s going to be beyond complex to manage if there are different versions of the same file available in one place, like what is going on with Thingiverse. And they won’t be able to control what happens with files if they are accessible for free to the general population. (I think I saw a recent article about a lawsuit on Thingiverse a while back, but I haven’t been following it closely.)
Having a large pool of limited access files available only to people who purchase the GF would be a big selling point for this laser as opposed to competitors. The only problem with keeping them on the forum is that no one can go in and browse through a thumbnail gallery of files…it’s time consuming to read through separate forum posts to see if there is something that meets your current needs.
If I were setting it up, I would shoot for a separate gallery of freebies created by the owners, set up so that only GF owners have permission to download the files, but that display for the general public. It’s a way to showcase the first creations of the new owners if they choose to share with other owners, get them some free advertising for their work, get them some props, and encourage ideas. (And frankly…make the competitors turn a little green around the gills. I’m not above that sort of thing. Chuckle!)
Interesting that you say that having different licensing/payments for the same file is ‘beyond complex’, but that is exactly what they do on another site, see below:
This site was recently referenced on a different GF post for cutting files. Files can be purchased for personal usage, or you can pay an additional $8 for the right to sell what you produce. Clearly an honesty system, but I guess it must work.
The main thing for me is to ensure people make the files available for commercial usage…
Maybe an option should be to allow everyone to see/purchase the file or just GF users. However, I would have thought if you want to sell the designs, then you probably just want to maximise sales by making them available to everyone.
My understanding is that the community.glowforge.com site is open to the world for read-access, however you must be an owner to have an account/post. I guess you could configure read/view access to people that only have accounts for that particular section.
Licensing is a tough issue to deal with (enforce). Some people will always try and cheat the system meaning no system will be perfect. Glowforge isn’t reinventing the wheel here though so their are models for them to follow. The biggest thing I’d worry about on their end is accepting a stolen copyrighted design into their marketplace. The whole premise of the catalog though nearly mimics stock photography/footage so it shouldn’t be tough to come up with a decent solution.
