I have put much effort into creating an alternative for the Thingiverse™ Customizer over the past two years. However, despite having over 6,000 registered users, only a few found it valuable enough to upgrade to a premium license. This could be due to two potential reasons: firstly, there is a limited community of OpenSCAD users, meaning few creators are interested in designing models for the platform. Secondly, most 3D printer users prefer pre-made models or a graphical CAD application to create their designs rather than customizing existing ones.
Unfortunately, due to the low number of paid subscribers, I have decided to shut down the platform at the end of this year. This means that all annual subscriptions will be refunded, and monthly subscriptions will be canceled. I want to thank everyone who joined me on this journey. Working on this project has been a pleasure, but unfortunately, it did not gain enough traction to continue.
I am so sorry! I know how much effort you put into this! All I see is that most people seem to print a ready-to-go file indeed, only a few love to tinker.
It was worth the effort as I learned a lot and now I have to think about home to support the rest of MakeWithTech. Probably will add Youtube memberships.
Sorry Irv that Models.makewithtech didn’t workout for your. It was a great idea but maybe the 3d printing community isn’t ready for something like that. I’ve looked at OpensCAD several times but just couldn’t get my head into drawing with code. To me it’s so much easier in CAD, granted not as flexible for the most part but if I design using spreadsheets I can adjust sizes too but for the most part aren’t sharable like your OpenSCAD program. I’ll admit I’m one that is here all the time but had very little interaction with models.makewiththech. You gave it a good shot and I commend you for that.
Sorry it didn’t work out. I guess there are quite a few barriers to usage of your site. One is visibility, when there are already quite a few model libraries on the net. I saw a Youtube teaser about “Thingiverse is back”, so there’s some refreshed competition, in addition to the spaces that Creality, Bambu Lab, Prusa, OnShape, etc. have constructed.
For people looking for models, there is no shortage of places to look, and there’s no “Amazon of models” yet. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing. I feel like we are 5-10 years from having a more centralized facility for model searches. That’s because it’s hard to figure out how to make a more centralized service pay the bills. My sense is that most people will just suffer by looking at five sites, instead of paying a subscription to search all at once. Not to mention that creating a centralized source will likely result in a loss of data available to the user, because the centralized site generally needs to focus on data that’s available on all platforms first.
Maybe the only way to make it work financially is to get all of those platforms to buy in to the centralized one by providing a common API to their database, and fund the centralized site’s development, maintenance, and expenses. It’s hard to see that happening anytime soon, due to the instense competition level at the moment.
Anyway, keep innovating! Hope to see you on Youtube soon
I would even take it a step further than what CoreyPDX said. I think that in 5 years from now, people will go to an AI site and tell it which object you need, and it will create it for you. I have seen how AI turns pictures into 3D objects already at this point, which worked really well. Absolutely amazing.
I am so sorry I have had a bad year, and I am retired, so I was waiting to be a paid subscriber till I caught up. I just got my printer a few months ago and found your page I bought a used Ender 3 neo and I have found your help so valuable to help me with making it work properly! Thank you Thank you I am sorry
Yeah, interesting idea! Perhaps it could get good at functional parts as well, though I know that describing a complex 3D object with just words is very difficult. A bit easier with equations, but if you can do that much, you might as well write the code in openscad (or similar) yourself.
I feel it’s a bit like how theoretical physicists tend to communicate difficult concepts with equations rather than English, because the latter is too imprecise. Unfortunately, right now English is all we have to use with AI at the moment. Maybe later there will be AI systems that handle math and geometry intrinsically, instead of being just a fancy word predictor.
I have to say though, that even though it’s been described as a fancy word predictor, it’s pretty damned good at writing code (though not OpenSCAD code). I recently created a little web site using a language and library that’s new to me (React + Typescript), and chatGPT, even the free one, helped me a lot! It also led me down a lot of dead ends, but overall, it accelerated the building of the web site by about 3X I guess, and helped me learn React and Typescript at the same time. Along the way, it even reviewed my code and made suggestions about how to debug certain problems. Very impressive.
I feel like we’re just at the beginning of this tech curve, but maybe it will hit some dead ends sooner than I think.
Yes, indeed, in regards to technically accurate parts, we won’t get to AI that soon. I just figure the average user will be happy, those looking for a fun prints of home gadgets, decoration and toys mostly, after being on several different printer communities the past 2.5 years. I can see people instruct AI to make them models without real accurate specs within a few years though.
It will be a bit depressing for people with artistic skills to design elaborate and time consuming items most people probably won’t pay for anymore then, and it will be oodles of fun for people like me, who can do some basic designing, but have ideas in their heads which can’t be done easily. I have visions for dollhouses which will be stunning, lol, for example. Can’t wait to feed that info to AI and print that lot! Gasp!
I primarily use Tinkercad to design custom items then use trial and error to narrow down the parameters to get the custom print I want. (proprietary test tube holders and items around the house.)
Haven’t taken the time to try SCAD but will in the future as need dictates.
Really appreciate your great advice and moving the community to do great things. Your videos are great.