GrabCAD Community User Group

From what I've seen that most of your models are guns.Due to our current policy, military gun models are deemed inappropriate and will not be shown on the front page.

We do understand and acknowledge that many of these guns and military models are not useable models and a lot of great engineering is work is put into modeling them so they can still be found in the Library and Most Downloaded section of GrabCAD.

Can you please direct me to where this is written on your site? There seems to be a lot of waffling on the staff's behalf on this topic.

I'm starting to feel that my work is not appreciated here.

Im sorry that you feel that way and that is not the case. We do feel that your work is contributing to the GrabCAD community and we do appreciate the time that you put into your models.

Here is a link to our Values and Guidelines. If you look in the Do Not section on line Number 6 it talks about inappropriate content and our policy on inappropriate content.

Values and Guideline

Nothing that is in this body of text is directed at you as an individual, but come on. I always thought of GrabCAD as being an impartial body of knowledge and resources. 3D models are intangible items and therefore have no real bearing on the physical world. I'm even had other staff members come to my defense on this matter before so you might understand why I'm getting irritated with this constant debate.

I know I'm stroking my ego here but as your #100 highest ranked "engineer" on the site, I expected the same treatment I've always got on the matter: To have my work featured just as equally as everyone else. There's no doubt my work, and everyone else's related work generates web traffic, and therefore revenue. The only reason I even do CAD work is to further the industry and help this site flourish.

That begs the question then: If firearms, and anything "violent" are against the community guidelines, why not just delete all of the models then, and the entire military category? I suggest revising the guidelines, and implementing any changes if these models are so inappropriate.

Community Values and Guidelines #6 - 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."

As the owners of the site I understand that GrabCAD is allowed to moderate what is shown on their front page, I'm not arguing that. However, may I be so bold as to ask why GrabCAD is biased against military models on the front page but models of half-naked women are allowed? https://grabcad.com/library/autumn-pose-2-1 Both are called inappropriate by the above guidelines but military models seem to take the harder hit. Respectfully, I suggest filtering what is shown on the front page with less bias or not at all.

Oliver - Your models are inspiring works of art, keep up the great work!

A week or two back, I saw one of my models on the front page for about 5 hours. When I went back to see how it was doing it had disappeared completely. I dare say a revolver is a far cry from a military style unless we traveled back to the late 1800 somehow.

My two cents is if you can post it and it does not get deleted then it should be able to bee seen on any page just like a model of a screw, oh wait that might be sexual in connotation... better delete it just to be safe.

No double standards, if it cant be shown on the front page delete the model and send a message to the poster with the reason why it was deemed inappropriate. But I dare say that hard line stance might drive many people away, dont know, Id be grievous if my work disappeared all of a sudden.

Oliver you have some nice stuff uploaded.

Mike G.

There is likely something going on in the news which has resulted in a desire to strip the main landing page of firearms. Another shooting? Maybe the Defense Distributed guys are heading back to court?

If a new user saw the library page a few weeks ago they would have seen it filled with firearms models.

I have no objections, but it can cause this site to come under greater scrutiny by advocates and media. They will see the popular page filled with firearms, and think everyone with a 3D printer is churning out dozens of rifles to arm some unknown threat.

Hopefully everything will go back to normal in a few weeks. If not, maybe make an announcement so it is clear what models are blocked from the popular page. Firearms, tanks, knives, missiles, radios, insignia, aircraft, ships?.... "Military" covers a lot of models. Is the filtering done by the categories and tags selected when uploading?

I always interpreted "removal of inappropriate models" as removal from the library. It seems there is a new class of model which is acceptable for the library, but not for display on the popular page.

I'm generally against filtering. If the models are "bad" remove them. If they are "not that bad" let them stay. Either way it would be great to mention policy change in a Group post, or Blog.

Maybe change the library to default to "safe searches" the way some search engines do? You get completely different results for a search of "baby oil" depending on the "safe search" value.

All users can be defaulted to "safe search" with no "dangerous models" showing. Users can then turn the setting off if desired.

Thank you for the kind words, gents. Unfortunately, this is it for me. The whole experience has left a sour taste in my mouth.