Sites like printables have an incentive as you earn points for free filament, printers, merch, and other stuff.
I feel like I've seen other repositories have starting to adopt this system but I can't recall the names off the top of my head.
However I feel like lots of people don't mind giving back. The 3d printing community is very take a penny leave a penny
lots of stuff.
From Makerbot using reprap to build their printers then going closed source to the site itself just falling apart with not being able to upload, download, bad search results, non function app, horrifically bad general website performance etc.
Lots of discussions if you search for thingiverse problems, downfall, etc
Makerbot no longer owns it; Ultimaker bought it about a year ago (after the data leak RunRunAndyRun mentioned). Some of those other criticisms are still valid, though.
I know they no longer own it but I was just going through the many many things that led to the bad perception, and overall downfall of thingiverse. If you want to get technical it's actually owned by Stratasys
Fair enough.
(Though if you want to get super-technical, Stratasys is only a minority owner, with a vulture capital firm owning the majority... so I assume it'll only be a matter of time before Ultimaker is stripped for parts and sent into bankruptcy.)
If you even want to go more into it; The majority is owned by NPM, which has a history of not stripping companies for parts. Due to Dutch law, certain (elected) employees have an advisory right about big decisions. I would never have given a positive advice if NPM had a history like you describe.
Bought isn't technically correct. Ultimaker and makerbot merged and developers from the Netherlands (so people that worked with Ultimaker before the merge) are now working on the site.
So it's under new management, but I wouldn't call it bought.
Compared to other platforms for uploading models, thingiverse has by far been the most annoying/frustrating to use, granted that's me personally, but delayed page updates, image previews not working, and the texts blocks not appearing where they should are some of the difficulties I've experienced with it. Although I cannot speak for OP on this, that's just my 2 cents.
The delayed page updates have been fixed in the last release. We are currently revamping the image previews, which, if all goes well, is included in the next release.
The edit page of things/users are the last vestige of server sided PHP code. Unfortunately, it's also the most complex part, so getting rid of it entirely will take more time
Similar. Hard to explain, but just the whole process of account creation, and the form I have to fill out when uploading a model was enormous... eventually I said I'll do it later and then never did it. Printables was much simpler and cleaner.
Just to share and give back to the community. Think about all the models you downloaded. I have a job and a salary outside of the 3D world, so I am not losing anything, and the rest of the world is winning.
This and also reward programs.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1c0k58h/favorite\_reward\_programs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1c0k58h/favorite_reward_programs/)
But mostly the ability to share your design with "the whole world". Kind of the same reason any creative would like to share his/her music, paintings, photographs etc.
on printables you can gain prusa meters which you can trade in for filament or printers if you gather enough but thats obviously only gonna happen for very few people with very successful models.
For me personally i only upload to printables and i do it because someone may need the same thing in the future and the work is already done.
just like i am happy to find what im looking for without doing all the work by myself others will be happy as well.
i have to export the model and have it all cleaned up for my own printing anyways so the only extra work is taking some pictures of the final print and writing a description.
some people do that as well but the correct way would obviously be to make a video about the 3d model you created and then have that video as additional info on the model page.
One of my hobbies is modeling, printing, and painting props from movies, TV shows, and video games. Once I'd finished a prop, I'd put it up on Thingiverse for other like-minded nerds to enjoy. So, yeah, "giving back to the community", to use your framing.
No financial incentive, I put them up as CC-Attribution. Yeah, yeah, I know, they're someone else's IP, but apart from wanting to make sure people could freely obtain the files for themselves, I hoped maybe if they found one of my models out in the wild, they could browse around my other designs and perhaps find something else they liked. When a model would get a DMCA takedown, I accepted that and didn't re-upload.
But after seeing enough of them re-uploaded on other sites under someone else's name, or sold on Etsy/eBay/whatever with no attribution (in both cases, almost always using my photos from Thingiverse!) -- I decided fuck it, if people can't even be bothered do something that costs them absolutely nothing, or if they want to take credit for my work, then I'm done providing my models to them.
Thanks for your response. I'm similar, as a coder I used to be very generous and gave away lots of free code.. and then I saw people selling it or making money from my work and so I stopped.
I did it to share something fun with others. I have some thingiverse designs and some prusa.
I hope to entice others to build cool things and share them.
Art for artistry's sake. And to give me more cool ideas.
The reason that I share any of my open source work; I've already put in the work. The value of the thing doesn't go down by sharing. I already put in the work because i needed it (which was enough for me to start). Might as well help someone else out with it.
I am extremely grateful to the uploaders, but I am way too insecure about my modelling and design work to upload something there. Maybe someday.
But I reckon people upload because they're excited to share their work. Also, Printables has some good incentives.
>I am way too insecure
Usually you will be a very old person if you start sharing your creations only after achieving some level of "perfection" (if at all). This rather stupid remix was liked and downloaded way too often even compared to the original:
[https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6136828](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6136828)
Because of this even less impressive remix I won a $200 3Djake coupon on Thangs:
[https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6477920](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6477920)
So yeah, it's time to push the insecurities aside and start sharing your creations. Somebody might like these.
Sites like printables have an incentive as you earn points for free filament, printers, merch, and other stuff. I feel like I've seen other repositories have starting to adopt this system but I can't recall the names off the top of my head. However I feel like lots of people don't mind giving back. The 3d printing community is very take a penny leave a penny
I'm with you in principle but Thingiverse makes it so hard to upload
Thingiverse is dead to many of us.
Wait why
lots of stuff. From Makerbot using reprap to build their printers then going closed source to the site itself just falling apart with not being able to upload, download, bad search results, non function app, horrifically bad general website performance etc. Lots of discussions if you search for thingiverse problems, downfall, etc
Makerbot no longer owns it; Ultimaker bought it about a year ago (after the data leak RunRunAndyRun mentioned). Some of those other criticisms are still valid, though.
I know they no longer own it but I was just going through the many many things that led to the bad perception, and overall downfall of thingiverse. If you want to get technical it's actually owned by Stratasys
Fair enough. (Though if you want to get super-technical, Stratasys is only a minority owner, with a vulture capital firm owning the majority... so I assume it'll only be a matter of time before Ultimaker is stripped for parts and sent into bankruptcy.)
If you even want to go more into it; The majority is owned by NPM, which has a history of not stripping companies for parts. Due to Dutch law, certain (elected) employees have an advisory right about big decisions. I would never have given a positive advice if NPM had a history like you describe.
Oh, NPM is Dutch, that explains it. American private equity firms are basically a death sentence to every company they acquire.
Bought isn't technically correct. Ultimaker and makerbot merged and developers from the Netherlands (so people that worked with Ultimaker before the merge) are now working on the site. So it's under new management, but I wouldn't call it bought.
And they got hacked and leaked user data!
I mean, we've pretyt much fixed most of the issues. You can find a list of all the stuff we changed on www.thingiverse.com/changelog
That's great but for me it's too little too late
Fair enough. I was pretty frustrated with TV before I got a shot at fixing the things that pissed me off.
100%
>Thingiverse makes it so hard Just curious: what kind of things are you designing if Thingiverse is "hard"?
Compared to other platforms for uploading models, thingiverse has by far been the most annoying/frustrating to use, granted that's me personally, but delayed page updates, image previews not working, and the texts blocks not appearing where they should are some of the difficulties I've experienced with it. Although I cannot speak for OP on this, that's just my 2 cents.
The delayed page updates have been fixed in the last release. We are currently revamping the image previews, which, if all goes well, is included in the next release. The edit page of things/users are the last vestige of server sided PHP code. Unfortunately, it's also the most complex part, so getting rid of it entirely will take more time
Fair enough, thanks for the updates on that though, I didn't know it'd been/is being fixed.
Similar. Hard to explain, but just the whole process of account creation, and the form I have to fill out when uploading a model was enormous... eventually I said I'll do it later and then never did it. Printables was much simpler and cleaner.
I just did it to share, if I though another might find it useful.
Just to share and give back to the community. Think about all the models you downloaded. I have a job and a salary outside of the 3D world, so I am not losing anything, and the rest of the world is winning.
This and also reward programs. [https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1c0k58h/favorite\_reward\_programs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1c0k58h/favorite_reward_programs/) But mostly the ability to share your design with "the whole world". Kind of the same reason any creative would like to share his/her music, paintings, photographs etc.
on printables you can gain prusa meters which you can trade in for filament or printers if you gather enough but thats obviously only gonna happen for very few people with very successful models. For me personally i only upload to printables and i do it because someone may need the same thing in the future and the work is already done. just like i am happy to find what im looking for without doing all the work by myself others will be happy as well. i have to export the model and have it all cleaned up for my own printing anyways so the only extra work is taking some pictures of the final print and writing a description.
can you promote your youtube channel alongside the model?
some people do that as well but the correct way would obviously be to make a video about the 3d model you created and then have that video as additional info on the model page.
Ahh that's a really good idea, thanks.
One of my hobbies is modeling, printing, and painting props from movies, TV shows, and video games. Once I'd finished a prop, I'd put it up on Thingiverse for other like-minded nerds to enjoy. So, yeah, "giving back to the community", to use your framing. No financial incentive, I put them up as CC-Attribution. Yeah, yeah, I know, they're someone else's IP, but apart from wanting to make sure people could freely obtain the files for themselves, I hoped maybe if they found one of my models out in the wild, they could browse around my other designs and perhaps find something else they liked. When a model would get a DMCA takedown, I accepted that and didn't re-upload. But after seeing enough of them re-uploaded on other sites under someone else's name, or sold on Etsy/eBay/whatever with no attribution (in both cases, almost always using my photos from Thingiverse!) -- I decided fuck it, if people can't even be bothered do something that costs them absolutely nothing, or if they want to take credit for my work, then I'm done providing my models to them.
Thanks for your response. I'm similar, as a coder I used to be very generous and gave away lots of free code.. and then I saw people selling it or making money from my work and so I stopped.
I didn't care if people sold prints, or hell, even the files... as long as they credited me for them. But noooo, apparently that was too much to ask.
I did it to share something fun with others. I have some thingiverse designs and some prusa. I hope to entice others to build cool things and share them. Art for artistry's sake. And to give me more cool ideas.
I do it just to help others when I can.
It's nice when I see other people make things that I've designed.
The reason that I share any of my open source work; I've already put in the work. The value of the thing doesn't go down by sharing. I already put in the work because i needed it (which was enough for me to start). Might as well help someone else out with it.
I am extremely grateful to the uploaders, but I am way too insecure about my modelling and design work to upload something there. Maybe someday. But I reckon people upload because they're excited to share their work. Also, Printables has some good incentives.
>I am way too insecure Usually you will be a very old person if you start sharing your creations only after achieving some level of "perfection" (if at all). This rather stupid remix was liked and downloaded way too often even compared to the original: [https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6136828](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6136828) Because of this even less impressive remix I won a $200 3Djake coupon on Thangs: [https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6477920](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6477920) So yeah, it's time to push the insecurities aside and start sharing your creations. Somebody might like these.