Things: Parameterized

In addition to the many wonderful stl and dxf files on Thingiverse, there’s a growing number of scripts which, instead of creating one exact shape, can be reconfigured to create a family of shapes for each script.

The Box-o-tron represents not one box but a whole class of boxes.  The GCode Python Packs turn math into models.  There’s now a script that makes detailed, correctly-shaped involute gears.  In creating this universe of things first imagined by Zach and the gang, users are discovering how to spend their design efforts making not single things, but whole classes of things at a time, making shapes available to Thingiverse in quantity and richness that really might start to look like the “just download one” future we optimists go on about.