I've been asked three times to make someone a 3d printable gun. that is not innovation, that is idiocy that will lead to a missing hand. I am a gun owner. I've worked in the same offices as gunsmiths. I'm not looking forward to a 16 year old pulling plans, attempting to build something that could be fundamentally wrong, trying to fire it and hurting themselves or others. It's the same reason I don't post an high pressure designs. To much danger to the end user if made with ignorance to the risks.
Look at a site like Imgur. It's 100 times more popular than GrabCAD and deals in a larger volume of submissions.
I believe all new entries arrive in the user submission section: https://imgur.com/user/usersub From there all users of the site review, up/down vote, and comment on the submissions.
When a post has achieved a critical mass of upvotes it is transferred to imgur proper https://imgur.com/ where the "better" curated content is stored.
GrabCAD can work in a similiar manner. All submissions go to "user sub" until they are voted into GrabCAD proper.
If garbage makes it through the vetting process those accounts upvoting garbage are reviewed. When accounts upvote enough garbage they lose their voting right.
Content with a majority of downvotes can be reviewed by admins. Spam and similar content leads to a closed account.
Groups have admins now and people are not keeping up with the content of their own group(s). I doubt a small number of volunteers are going to be successful in curating submissions. There's also an ongoing issue of admins leaving over time.
It seems to late for a paywall. GrabCAD is going to "sell" our uploaded models to new members? I'd be onboard if they delete all current models and start over with a new library hosting only models uploaded by paying members. Otherwise there's little difference between GrabCAD selling our models and a random Chinese website doing the same (and people get very upset when it happens).
Ads? I could care less. Everyone has the ability to block ads if they don't want to see them.
The GrabCAD guidelines prevent functional weapons:
Do not upload dangerous content. We consider "dangerous" any models that, when printed, could cause physical harm to other people. This includes 3D-printable, fully-functional firearm designs like "The Liberator". This also includes dangerous or untraceable firearm modifications like silencers, lower receivers and drop-in auto sears, as well as any other components that transform semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic ones.
It's rather difficult to enforce, and it is largely ignored until a day after a news story about such a "weapon" makes the headlines.
3D printed weapons are innovative. Their design, creation, and testing leads to advancements in design, processes, and materials.
People will get hurt making inferior weapons the same as they'll get hurt doing a hundred other activities. If I 3D print a boomerang and lose an eye after throwing it am I to blame GrabCAD for supplying the 3D model?
That's a risk of a worldwide site with millions of users. There's no way to know what models will offend some members. The guidelines state:
Do not upload inappropriate content. What is considered “inappropriate”? It differs in every culture, but violent, sexual, and political content are often the biggest issues in this sense. GrabCAD Support reserves the right to remove any content that is deemed inappropriate for the GrabCAD Community.
I look at the gott mit uns model and I see an eagle with an iron/Maltese cross. This cross predates Nazi Germany.
The text gott mit uns is meaningless to me but wikipedia shows it's been in used for hundreds of years.
Rather than be upset by a phrase or symbol I view how it is being used.
Fred, you didn't understand what I wanted to say with my message. Perhaps these are just difficulties in translation ... Perhaps you just read my text inattentively.
Let me give you some advice. Do not draw knowledge from Wikipedia, and even more so do not start judging anything on the basis of this knowledge.
In order:
The Maltese cross, as a symbol of the Hospitallers, for me (as well as for you) does not carry a negative connotation. We are not killed Syrians, Kurds, Arabs of the times of the wonderful, humanitarian crusades of the Middle Ages. For reference ... the Nazis called the military campaign to my homeland a new crusade. Appreciate irony, symbology, and continuity. I understand you when you say that this phrase does not tell you anything. Without context, it is as ordinary and understandable as In God We Trust.
Same way.
The swastika, as a solar symbol, is much older than the Maltese cross and got mit uns combined to the nth power. The number of years, epochs is not a criterion for a symbol at all. Re-read the definition of what a symbol is and everything will become clear to you.
Now about your terada with examples. If you take what you wrote at the beginning of your text and combine it with your example, then we can say that the swastika at the synagogue is just a wish for the whole "Sunny", that is, good mood to the Jews, an ancient beautiful symbol and no negative canotation. However, you don't think so. Why? Because your initial premise is not correct. It is important what they want to tell you, to show you. Who wants to say it and the main thing is why they show it to you with this symbol using it in a certain context. In the synagogue example, you can easily answer these three questions. What? Who? For what?
If they want to show me an airplane, a tank and for historical reasons it has a Maltese cross and even a swastika on it, then I have no questions. I understand. They want to show me a historical subject. But if they show me not a buckle, as an element of the ammunition of a Wehrmacht soldier (it is absent on the model), but we are shown exactly the print and everything that it represents. This dear Fred means that they are trying to draw a swastika on our "synagogue".
With all due respect
Hi Guys I have been away for a few months (health problems) and was hoping that GrabCad had cleaned up its act after all the promises made but it doesnt seem that way all I see is a new front page but all the spam and people just posting pictures without models are still there. The link to rules has gone now so people just say we didnt know. please correct me if Iám wrong. CadCloud.
Welcome back and hope you are doing fine now. GC has been definitely much much better at handling spam reports and cleaning up at least. But the influx of Spam posts, questions, tutorials, etc are still the very same.
It has been much better but for some reason there has been a sudden increase in the spam in the last few days.
It appears there has been a crackdown on spammy tutorials. Many of them got deleted. This resulted in some disgruntled members throwing some tantrums but the GC team took care of them.
If you don't receive the email within an hour (and you've checked your Spam folder), email us as confirmation@grabcad.com.