not all grabcad users are valuable to the community because some of them stealing the efforts of other like downloading their models and selling it on some other websites and that really hurts..
recently i found out with help of my follower that all my grabcad models was sold in a china website by person called min zhong who uploaded almost 9991 models which belongs to GRABCAD community.
not only my models but some other users like MAB(mahmet), trinityscp , ivo jordin etc., so we need to find a solution for this ...we should let any user to use the efforts of other without permission of the author.
pls go through this link and that fellows profile in that website and you will come to know what am trying to say this fellow sold everything which we got in grabcad
http://www.mfcad.com/tuzhi/848/415228.html
expecting better solution for it
It would be great to hear people's thoughts and suggestion for how to solve this problem.
This is a very long and ongoing debate across other CAD communities as well. One of the famous case was that of a CAD model from Thingverse which got sold in ebay platform.
According to "User submission" section in website terms of GRABCAD.
"User Submissions made publicly available will not be deemed (or treated as) confidential or sensitive to you."
Since this is a case of stealing and selling it to third party, you and rest of the members whose models have been downloaded can report that member.
This has been a hot topic for some time, not just in the CAD sharing communities but for every design operation that offers a product to the public. My opinion, after nearly 25 years of design engineering across multiple disciplines, is this...
If your product is simple enough that it can be produced without any of the pertinent data one would actually need to ENGINEER it, then you may not have anything all that special on your hands in the first place. If it's conceptual and you think it's of value, then it should be protected at the very least, with a provisional patent.
You have to protect your IP if you truly believe the design to hold value. That means, the information needed to manufacture the product; the GD&T, the feature controls, the coatings and tolerances and all the other stuff that is necessary to producing something worth building. If you don't and haven't safeguarded it, then put it on a public site? IMO, you didn't think much of it in the first place.
I agree with both of you @cmalco & @Logan but those people who steal cad models will still earn money right ?
Yes, that potential is always there.
You can preempt it though, whether your goal is monetary or not. Simply post your models there first, before placing them on GrabCad. Protect any IP that makes the design tick; the materials, heat treat, tolerances, coatings, stress relieving, etc.. Work out a provisional patent and cover all your bases.
If you're simply protecting 'models', then a preemptive stance is likely the only one that is going to work. Laws are only as effective as the ability to enforce them...
I have to agree with cmalco.
Nobody likes it when their stuff is "stolen", but we are talking about a CAD model which is uploaded to a public website with a giant DOWNLOAD button.
Preventing the theft will come at the expense of other legitimate users. I've seen many people upload amazing looking assemblies, but they only post the rendering, and one or two of the dozens of parts needed. Absolutely useless.
I think most people have a problem with the idea that someone else is generating profit by reselling these free models.
Maybe it would help to see the theft as a tax on stupidity? If someone is stupid enough to pay for a model which is freely available, then I guess they deserve to be paying for it.
On a similar note, if I get paid by the hour, and downloading a model from GRABCAD saves me N hours of time. Am I not in a sense getting a financial gain by making use of the model? Does this scenario differ a lot from actually reselling the model on other sites?
I'm going to start a website that charges people for air. Payment plans will range from per breath taken (you'll need to wear a breath meter), all the way to lifetime plans which offer significant savings.
I hope my previous comments didn't come across too harshly. As someone who had to learn his lesson the hard way on this, I can surely empathize with what Dhana is saying. The world becomes a lot easier to understand once we accept the fact that everyone's ethics are not calibrated to the same standard and even when they are, some will do the unthinkable where money is involved.
If someone steals my Naboo ship, cup or pot for monetary reasons, I'm okay with it. :)
If I put something up here that I truly care about and may want to make money with one day, you can rest assured it will be just enough to get the concept of the design across and nothing more.
Like FredSWUG, I have used numerous GrabCad models in my own designs as a means of saving time. I mean, why spend hours modeling something that someone is offering up for free? I didn't use them to make 'money' but yes, if time = money, and it often does, then we've certainly injected some gray into our black and white with this one?
If a model is available from a manufacturer, I will use it for the very same reason. That said... what most of them are starting to do, for the very reasons we've brought up here, is offering 'simplified' models. I'm always expressing to our guys, because we often work to very specific weight limitations for 1-person lift etc, is to not trust the model to yield a correct weight. To always check the model to manufacturer's specifications and adjust it accordingly. Why? Because a lot of the circuitry, hydraulics and other internal components, are often missing or represented as dummy components.
Another example of companies protecting their IP. One you can use on your own designs.
I just now created and made the best 3D printer I have ever designed. It cost me serious design and build time. I actually designed it especially for the Grabcad community. I was aiming to get my first badge on my account with this one.
However I am in distress now, I don't know what to do after reading a comment a couple of weeks back in the Grabcad Community User Group (How to avoid theft of 3D models comment) about china stealing thousands of users uploads and selling them for production. Truthfully I am quite devastated putting all this design and build time in to a project and now I am worried to upload it.
This 3D printer is more than a match for others on the market. What if someone else rips off my work and then makes a giant success story out of my design.
I have to sit here and watch them get rich knowing that is my work. I just don't think I could take a sucker punch like that !
I may have to just sit on it until I get the time to go through all the creative commons copyright or something.
I don't know what to do any advice would be helpful.
Xgentec,
If I had the next generation of 3D printer figured out, I'd look to produce and market the product, or sell the design.
Creative commons, copyright, patents, and other protections are nice, but they offer no guarantee your design, or pieces of it will not be stolen. Such protections can grant you a legal means to fight back, but that can lead to very high legal costs.
I'm not sure about China stealing thousands of uploads and selling them for production. Most of the "theft" is in the form of downloading free models from GrabCAD, then uploading the models on other sites which sell the models.
The majority of models on GrabCAD are not production ready, it might be best to think of then as concept models, art, and practice parts.
Hello Fred, thanks for the comment.
It is far from the next gen of 3d printer, It is a brilliant home and business printer. it was originally designed for everyone in the gragcad community, easy to move around, very very solid, strong, very precise, large build area, based on cnc technology and reasonably cheap in design. Ive been running it in the lab now for 3 months solid every day and I use it for professional level prototype printing.
I think I am going to leave it a few months and release it on Grabcad anyway.
Thanks for the feedback Fred much appreciated.
All you are saying is very interesting.
For my part, GrabCad has helped me very often, the idea of sharing work with other to improve our possibilitys is of great importance.
We live in a world of money, but there is something else much more stronger.
For some people, Grabcad can be a way of showing there talent. So we are rewarded, for some it is a way to seek peoples interest, so their are rewarded.
Maybe the better way not to be stolen is to put just part of a product, if the aim is to seek your own selling profit.
Hello Christie,
Thank you for the comment, I completely agree sharing work and ideas is of great importance. This was originally designed for the grab cad community to help others get started so I have decided to release it soon.
Mikk OlliSTAFF Mar 7, 2018
It would be great to hear people's thoughts and suggestion for how to solve this problem.
The best, and most logical way to combat this problem would be to eliminate fake profiles. Make sure that every member of GrabCAD is an actual person living in an actual location. This means that a member engaged in 'illegal activities' can be tracked, persecuted (in theory), warned, deleted, etc.
But, for whatever reasons, GrabCAD is infatuated with boasting of having millions of users, even though the statistics clearly shows that the majority are fake profiles and a small minority of dedicated users constitute the community.
Please get rid of the pertinently false profiles, starting with the good people from Antigua and Barbuda, such as:
https://grabcad.com/ttutr.s.sgh.ff-1
https://grabcad.com/makeleleprou_u.gamer-1
https://grabcad.com/thomasfdsg.hannigangfdgffd-2
https://grabcad.com/sss.ssss-22
https://grabcad.com/sdfdsf.wfdfd-1
https://grabcad.com/spam.spam-22
https://grabcad.com/hjfgdgvf.gghg-1
https://grabcad.com/hvrwv.wtftfbu-1
https://grabcad.com/hvrwv.wtftfbu-1
https://grabcad.com/hkos.fgt-2
https://grabcad.com/123.123-197
https://grabcad.com/assasdffa.asdvqa-1
https://grabcad.com/asd.dsa-152
https://grabcad.com/cherry.cola-1
https://grabcad.com/dfgzdfdzf.xcfbdfzg-1
https://grabcad.com/fda.adad-1
and so on ad nauseam. There are literally 100s of pages of this nonsense. They probably represent people who have wanted to download something anonymously. In what possible way do these non-entities contribute to the community?
When I hear of someone stealing models from GrabCAD, this image comes to mind:
I also came across the sale of my models by Chinese sites. And not only Chinese. Once I came to the 3D printing studio and saw that my grip were being printed for rifles. I ask the owner, buy well? Says yes, only this order is 50 pieces. After a conversation where he told how difficult it was for him to make a model. Then he offered me to buy my own model. I say ok, but I need to look (rotate) before buying. The fact is that I leave a digital footprint in all of its publicly available models. But this was not necessary. The owner opened the folder "With my own developments" which was called my nickname on GrabCAD and in which all my developments from the site lay. Here is such a funny and a bit sad story.
I watch very often. Some user follow me, usually from China or India (No avatar, 0 models, 0 comments, etc.) After that, all my models get +1 downloads. Wrote GrabCAD, how to deal with it, but perhaps the letter did not come, or they do not care.
I understand what you mean about the digital footprint in your models, I've seen several members watermark their renderings, and 3D models.
I spent ~10 minutes editing this STL file to remove the watermark from inside of the cup to see how difficult it was. It was easy.
Sadly, the only way I see to prevent theft is to upload low polygon STL files of designs. The theft problem is solved, nobody will want the files, they are ugly, and useless. Of course, the model library will be lost, and we'll have a gallery of rendered images.
When we ask for theft be fixed on GrabCAD, what are we asking for? Try to picture what the result looks like. How does it work? Let's define who/what we are against, and what defines success or failure in this battle.
Fred, I'm not so stupid as to place only such stamps, much less rely on their protection. They are visible to the eye and can be removed.
If you're interested, I can tell you how I do it, but only by a personal message.
Preamble to the proposal.
GrabCAD is a YouTube for engineers. Just like YouTube, they are interested in the fact that users laid out content. From here and all these "dances" with new badges. But the creators of the site may not understand that the site is developed (spread worthy content) of the order of only a few thousand engineers. In the Military section, for example, it is about 25-50 people. The rest of the accounts are mostly consumers. On the site, everything is done for the second group of "consumers" based on the commercial interests of the creators of the site. But not understanding the contradictions of the interests of the first and second groups leads to such excesses. I understand that every analogy is false. But. The most vivid illustration will be the analogy from the eponymous story "Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. In the story or film of Spielberg there are three "seers - oracles" Agatha and the twins. Similarly, the second group "Twins" without the first advanced group "Agatha" will not be able to produce any good "Prediction".
If nothing is done for the first group of users, they will eventually lose all interest in making good models, which in turn will lead to a decline in the interest of the second group, which in turn will lead to general stagnation.
PRO Creation (Professional)
This is a very flexible system in my opinion and can be applied (customized) in any of its form. All the issues and prerequisites are presented above, as well as in the topic: New Feature: New Badges System Phase 1. This is the first sketch to understand the general logic. Please take this into account, as well as that it is machine translation.
What gives this system!?
The most important thing is a big impetus to the development and increase in the number of models, as well as their quality.
Allows you to remove fake users (dependents).
Satisfying ambitions of serious engineers and growth for beginners.
Regular account:
In fact, the system forces you to "exchange" models. Until you put a certain number of models you can view, study, like, add to bookmarks but not download. Fulfilled the condition, download. (Here I would add one more restriction. For a unit of time (day, week), the user can download as many models as he himself has laid out.
Conditions for obtaining a PRO account:
Any user can get pro account.
• Number of "N" months (years) of registration on the site
• Number of "N" PRO models
• Number of "N" ordinary models
• ... any other positions needed for the site administration.
! You can bind the number of models laid out to a unit of time. Suspending the PRO account if the user did not post models for "some (month, quarter)" time.
As an option, if certain conditions are met, a pro account can receive the status of "Guru" as the highest stage of development.
Conditions for obtaining the name of the PRO model:
So, as the site covers many areas, it is necessary to work out certain minimum rules inherent (immanently) to all PRO models. (For example: the presence of a render, the presence of certain formats, etc.) At the first stage moderation by the site administration will be necessary. Further, these functions can be delegated to PRO users. For example, voting (moderation) - approval of at least 3-5 PRO users. Until moderation is completed, you will not be able to download the model, and you can even see a regular user.
Downloading the PRO model:
Pro model can download Pro user. I am for strict rules, but this is all discussed. You can also allow the normal user to download, "exchanging" it for example for 5-10-15 ordinary models for downloading per unit of time.
Thank you for the suggestion – if I understand you correctly, however, I see a couple of issues with this idea:
We might consider adding some form of "Pro" accounts in the future, but currently we have no plans of implementing any sort of tiered member abilities on GrabCAD.
Johannes
Developer @ GrabCAD
Johannes, thanks for the reply. If I understand you correctly. You basically confirmed what I wrote earlier. Formally, you write that you have a fundamental "the primary idea" and you "WANT" to work, but do not want to change anything.
Let me make out your fundamental postulate. It is not clear what you put in the word "idea". But even based on ancient Greek "definitions" - IDEA is a form of comprehension in thought of the phenomena of objective reality, which includes the consciousness of the purpose and projection of further knowledge and practical transformation of the world. In fact, this is a logic describing a certain reality, that is, something that can be written using mathematics. You, as a developer, cannot but know and understand that the logic of your “the primary idea” will break under any “If” condition (No). In my opinion, the logic of your idea is such a spherical horse in a vacuum. If I am mistaken, correct me, but in fact the topic in which we are writing already says at least that your “Idea” does not work correctly. In objective reality, there are no conditions under which it will work correctly, “As you wish,” and there are many contradictions unsolvable to it.
I understand that the problems of minority (from 5-10%) of users as a developer are of little interest to you. But this is the group that creates the most sought-after content to learn, and therefore download. If models steal all the feedback from “those who want to learn,” at best appears in the phrase “Good work,” and the likes put in basically the same 5-10% of the rest simply download. How do you think this group of users will come to? So far, this does not wear a systemic order and it does not bother you much, but all the prerequisites for this have been created by you. The Roman Empire, too, seemed to be forever. Think about it.
With all due respect.
https://www.makeshoponline.com/product_detail.php?c=mega%20man%20helmet%203d%20printed&p=13
I found this site selling my models. It makes me think it time to remove my models off of grabcad.
Hello GrabCAD Community,
We know there is a huge issue with models being stolen or being re-uploaded on another website or others trying to sell your model. We are currently in the process to combat these actions. We are looking into Legal, technical and other means of securing your models.
We apologize for the inconvenience but rest assure that we are working hard to come up with a solution.
Thank you,
Kesa
Kesa,
Glad to hear of some inter action on this issue. I personally have refrained from uploading models since September last year due to this factor and was tending to much the same mind as Rob G. It would be nice if GRABCAD could better reward the contributors and protect their interests. I realise that the models are willingly made available for everyone's benefit however it does cause outrage when that generosity is abused and immorally capitalised upon either for false prestige or to generate monetary gain especially without recognising the source. A little recognition for the effort goes a long way & it would not take much for the downloaders to approach the model originator to ask permission for certain actions or at the least press the LIKE button as a form of appreciation for a useful model. Personally I have over 100 downloads of my models a week yet only receive on average 6-7 likes.
This also raises another point. The model uploader though he retains owner rights however has no notifications given as to whom has downloaded their model. Hopefully something can done soon to give confidence to upload more models.
Kesa,
Given that GrabCAD is a pretty creative community, there may be some benefit to involving the community in the discussion of potential fixes to problems.
I'm confident GrabCAD can resolve issue(s), but having additional views from the users of the site could be valuable. There are several ideas posted into the Question and Group areas, but consolidating active member input into a specific, focused area may yield the best results.
I believe a lot of members are disappointed in the download/like ratio. I see two reasons for this:
Consider mixing things up. Reward the uploader when their model is downloaded. The like button could disappear. Instead, the comment option could be made more prominent. Between the two, I believe uploaders will find greater value in a written comment, than the press of the like button.
I'm sure there would be some logistics to work out to prevent someone from repeatedly downloading their own model hundreds of times a day to mine extra points.
Grabcad must provide an option for users for each single model they upload, which can enable/disable download of models. In this way users can set mode for model like
This feature will also make Grabcad to serve as perfect safe portfolio site for users.
I believe this goes against the very essence of what GrabCAD is about.
If you don't want it downloaded, don't put it on GrabCAD?
It is explicitly against GrabCAD guidelines to publish a model or assembly without all the associated CAD files. If there was no ability to download the CAD model then there really would be no need to have the CAD model to begin with. Otherwise only renderings would be acceptable. Many break this rule but that doesn't mean it's okay.
I am surprised by the situation when a person HIMSELF puts his work into public access and then wants other users not to use this work (model) for their own purposes. I agree with Bob Wiley on this issue.
If someone does not want or is afraid that his model will be stolen, then it is probably not worth sharing this model.
If someone wants to get an "achievement", then in my opinion, it would be wrong to think that unscrupulous users will not use his work.
GrabCAD should be seen as a place where you can put a bait, meaning that you can show a foretaste of them that you can offer. If you go fishing than should the bait be cheap. It's like throwing advertisment flyers in mail boxes, nothing more as that.
If you don't receive the email within an hour (and you've checked your Spam folder), email us as confirmation@grabcad.com.