I'm typically meticulous with things I design, and I would like to put more detail into my assembly. There's this new homebrewer I started watching. He has no theme that I can tell yet, but what's interesting is he works for a game company. He had no experience 3d modeling a few years ago, but now he's modeling in fusion360 like an expert. He's also acquired a 3d printer, a CNC, he's spinning his own control boards. But what really intrigues me is how detailed and organized he is with his model library.. which is pretty much all he's done on his first two streams, JUST reverse engineer the mechs he's using:
https://www.twitch.tv/surreal_7
This brings me to my point, libraries. There obviously exists more 3d parts and assemblies than exists on pinballmakers.com. Not everyone does the favor of uploading their files there, and I think it has to do with the tediousness of uploading to a wiki. I don't place any blame on Jeremy Wilson, the fact that he EVEN put that website up (and kicks off spammers) is amazing. Before then, it was all a bunch of homebrewers all modeling their stuff from scratch, maybe some stuff got shared on forums or slack groups if you asked. I'd say the better thing to do is simply have an FTP site with folders (like you might have a library of parts for things you design), but then how easily do you give access to others that want to upload files? How do you even police an FTP site? What if someone overwrites a file? What if someone uploads a virus? How do you verify the models that people are uploading are even accurate? I don't have the answers, but I would think it could be something that could be worked out so the homebrew community could collaborate more (and not redo the same work). I mean people upload sample YMML files so you don't have to code from scratch, why can't there be a say a standard williams cabinet with a blank starting playfield that has the standard ball trough, standard italian bottom, sling assemblies, flipper assemblies, and you can start modeling from there? The other problem is which format do you use? If you upload a solidworks file, great for solidworks users like me.. But fusion360 is free, and although solidworks 2020 seems to import ok, apparently 2021 does not. So now do you make everyone that uploads solidworks files also save out Step files? The other game changer recently announced at solidworks world this week is they plan to release a "maker license" mid-year for $99/year or $10/month. If you haven't shopped around for software that might sound terrible (especially if you're use to using fusion for free), but when you realize that even the most basic solidworks license is $4,000 with a mandatory $1200 service plan (plus tax), PLUS if you want to stay current with the latest release you have to pay another $1000 every year, $99 suddenly looks REALLY appealing. If you don't have a business, it really seems silly to pay for a professional license, but until this your only 2 options were:
1. Taking a class at a local college to get access to a student email address so you could get the $60/year license
2. Get an experimental aircraft membership for $45/year and get a free seat of solidworks (which isn't advertised, I only discovered it after someone posted in a 3d printing facebook page)
Now that fusion is deleting features (but allowing you to pay a small fee to keep them), solidworks finally looks appealing with this new tiered pricing. I might be biased, but if you go to any website that has 3d models (Mcmaster Carr being the biggest one), you really only have 2 choices.. Download a dummy STEP/IGES file you can't do any editing on, or download a native solidworks file. I have seen some websites RARELY support pro-engineer, but that seems to be dying. The only reason a website would obviously support that is because the engineers designing whatever product they're selling is still using that program.
