When you upload a digital design file to Thingiverse there are only a few guidelines. The third thing on the list is:

You may upload open-source/copyleft designs if you provide attribution.

I noticed today that thingiverse citizen archiveman uploaded the Stanford Bunny. This is totally cool! Besides uploading the file, archiveman copy and pasted the licensing info from the Stanford 3D Scanning Repository. Thanks for following procedure archiveman! I did a bit of research and pulled up some more info on this bunny. It’s a great read.

If you have a basic shape that you use to test out your 3D printer or have a favorite open source, copyleft, or creative commons object you want to upload to thingiverse, you can go for it, just remember to attribute the work!

For the purposes of finding these objects that aren’t yours but are important to be in the archive of digitally designed objects, I suggest we tag them all with the tag Archive. So if you’ve got a basic test design or want to archive a digital design that is open source, copyleft or creative commons, tag it with Archive so we can all find it! Want to see all the things tagged with archive, you can explore by tag by just typing this into your browser: http://www.thingiverse.com/tag:archive

At MakerBot we have an awesome designer named James Provost. I found him when he used images of rubics cubes to make a visual response to the Cult of Done Manifesto. He’s been rocking the design of MakerBot.com and has now splashed some fresh pixels onto the Thingiverse.com page.

Just look at how awesome Thingiverse looks! Not only that, but look at all the awesome stuff that folks are putting up there.

If you’re a tech blogger or a geek who likes to keep up with the freshest creativity in digital design, Thingiverse.com is for you to keep you fingers on the pulse of pure awesomeness. If you like to stay super up to date, you can get Thingalerts by following @thingiverse on twitter!

Greetings denizens of the Thingiverse. Scientists from the Automated Tools Nebula are reporting the sighting of a new and interesting craft dubbed the CupCake CNC. Early reports indicate that it is a cubic shaped machine capable of producing small objects in an automated fashion from a variety of materials including both plastic and frosting. Evidently the creators of the craft are a species that call themselves MakerBot Industries and claim to be the creators of the Thingiverse itself!

This preposterous claim may seem unsubstantiated at first, but as scientists we must give it a fair examination. As the Thingiverse has no known origin, we must rely on the knowledge gained from critical evaluation of the Thingiverse ‘Footer’. It seems that it has changed to now read MakerBot Industries which does imply that the two are related. Obviously more research is needed to determine the true nature and relationship between the two.

The leaders of the mysterious MakerBot Industries have asked that we play the following message to all the leaders of the various Galaxies in the Thingiverse.

Good news, friends.

First, the boring stuff: Thingiverse has moved to its own private, dedicated server. This means no more 503 Access Denied errors and no more crappy Dreamhost slowness. Our new server is through Completely Dedicated. We have a 3.2ghz P4, 2gigs of ram, a 36gig 10K hdd, and I’m loving it. Pages load faster. We can handle boatloads more traffic, and we have full control over the server. Yay!

Second, the cool stuff: I fixed the rendering bug SVG files were suffering from: the black background of death on large images. All the large SVG files now have a nice, white background and look absolutely GAWGEOUS! Any files you upload should be rendered properly and I even put all the previously uploaded SVG files back through the renderer to get fixed. I’m so nice!

Cheers,
Zach Hoeken
Thingiverse Hackinator

Today we are officially launching the Thingiverse Tool System!  The tool system is another way of categorizing the things that you love to make.  It will make it easier for people to find things that they can make, and it will make it easy to show people what tools are required to build your thing.  Since you can also add tools to your ‘garage’, you’ll also be able to connect with other people who use the same tools as you.

There are two things to do now that the tool system has launched.

1. In your profile you can show the universe which tools you have.
2. When uploading your things, you can tell people what tools they will need to make your project. You can also go into things you’ve already uploaded and add and edit the tools that were used to make the things

Once folks have set their profile up with the tools they have, and edited their things to show which tools were used, you’ll be able to do 3 things!

1. See the tools that are used in a project. What tools do you need to build a All Purpose Potentiometer and Switch Box?
2. Browse the Thingiverse by tool type. What projects can be made by a lasercutter? You can now find out!
3. See what tools a thing designer uses. What tools does Zach Hoeken use to build stuff?

Of course if you just want to browse through the tool system and read up on the various tools to find something new for your next project, thats cool too.  Just keep in mind that this system isn’t meant to be the authoritive guide on EVERY tool EVER, but if there is a tool you think we should really have that’s key to a project you’re publishing on thingiverse, let us know.