Where do folks prefer to host their 3d models and designs? Do you use one site, or multiple?
I originally started on Thingiverse, but switched to Printables after it launched and that has been my main location for uploading to. I recently decided to copy all my models to Thingiverse and Thangs, in additional to Printables, but I’m not sure its worth the effort to maintain the listings on multiple sites.
I love the Printables site, I think it has the best user experience, but Thingiverse seems to reach a bigger audience. Thangs I find useful for the search, but I’m not sure its worth hosting models there as well.
Printables.
I started on Thingiverse, then copied everything over to Printables when it became available. The traffic difference between them is huge. I uploaded my models to Printables in March 2022, and my total downloads is just over 2K for all of them. On Thingiverse, I have 4K downloads in just the last 30 days.
I still post most things to both sites, but sometimes I get lazy or will “do it later” and just not.
I’m seeing the same, A LOT more views and downloads on the models that I just copied across to Thingiverse in the last week.
I do printables. I used to do Thingiverse, but it was garbage back in the day. IDK how it is now. I’m contemplating doing both Printables and Thingi. Printables because I want it to work, but Thingi because it’ll get the furthest reach. I tend to do two things: one for the community I want to work and the other on the most popular.
An alternative is posting on GitHub. It’s not as easy to search for models there, but you can put all your project files there in one place. STL, build log, docs, code for the devices it may use, PCB files… it also keeps a history of your files so you can back track to a previous file. Plus it’s free, ad free, and open source.
GitHub is not open source
I think thingiverse is like the Reddit of models and printables is like the Lemmy.
I recall there being some issue people had with thingiverse but it’s still where all the action is.
I don’t have many but also started in Thingiverse and moved to Printables. On the occasion that I make something new it just goes into Printables.
That said I usually start a search using Thangs since it searches a bunch of sites in one go
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On Github/Gitlab - or a self hosted? Doesn’t seem like to most discoverable way of hosting models, unless you’re also linking to the git repo from one of the model sites. I do use git to version my OpenSCAD models, but just on a private selfhosted gitea instance.
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I do that too as it holds all the files for a project. Not just the shell of the device. GitHub could benefit from a tag search so something where you could add a 3D printing tag to your search and only show repos with 3D printing related files (CAD, STL, 3MF…) or manual tags.
Fediverse for model sharing? :P
Now that’s an interesting idea - Lemmy3D, kbiniverse, FireFishables? Someone needs to start making this now!
I wonder if you could just build it off of a mastodon service backend-wise where it just toots out links to the file download to everyone else.
I use thangs.com
Any particular reason why Thangs? I like the search, but I find the model management is not as intuitive
I was watching Zach Friedman on the Voidstar Labs YT channel and he was hosting gridfinity there.
I like the search feature, but I don’t upload all that often. You can always cross post against all of the sites.
MyMiniFactory is also good.
Zack’s Gridfinity vids were the reason I bought a printer in the first place so Thangs was my first stop, and I love that their search also indexes Printables/Thingiverse/Cults3D/etc.
Printables has the best UI and community engagement though. Seriously, in 2023 there’s no excuse for your website not having a dark mode option.
Printables, I don’t use any other site for sharing models. I sometimes use Thingiverse and Cults3D for downloading.
I put my first model up on Cults, Thingiverse, and I think one other site… so far only the Cults one seems to have gotten any traction, so I’m focusing on that.
Cults is noTORious for fucking over creators. Wiser to avoid.
Up to and including doxing someone because they publicly complained about Cults refusing to give them the money people have paid to download their creations.
Plus their sites runs like a bag of dicks.
So many gawdamned dicks.
