I once saw a SKP file THIIIIIIS big

 (Originally posted to the "Corner Bar" of the SketchUp forums)

I've seen about a half-dozen posts this morning from users making SketchUp files in sizes I frankly never would have dreamed possible in a thousand years. I think the largest file I've ever made in SketchUp was maybe 10MB. 90% of my work is for 3D printing, so I don't really need a lot of components, textures, or assets from the 3D Warehouse, and geolocation is only handy for a few practical demonstrations of scale.  

One of the files I saw someone have difficulty opening was almost 300MB. A lot of it turned out to be some unused components, and a quick purge from my fellow users with Enlightenment levels of patience brought it down to a somewhat more manageable 100MB. 

Moments later, I happened upon another forum post from someone else having difficulty opening a file. I get a bit worried; maybe there's something wrong with 2023 that's emerging or some compatibility issue with Apple Silicon nobody's worked out just yet. I click on the provided Google Drive link and almost fell out of my chair. 

It was nearly a full gigabyte. I mean... how? I'm frankly surprised it took getting to that size for them to start having issues. It's as if they made everything in one single session and only reopened it the next day. 

This isn't me knocking these folks for not being efficient. I recently spent a fair chunk of time re-uploading the same model file to the 3D Warehouse because I could not for the life of me figure out how a shipping pallet with a default texture was a full megabyte. It was literally made from a single component (a plank) arranged in the overall shape of a pallet. Even with the default scale figures (of which there were two for some reason) successfully purged, it was showing up as a full MB. It finally dawned on me that I had saved the geolocation in the file, complete with satellite image and topography. Obviously, that's not going to be much use to someone who just wants something for their forklift to pick up and set down, so it had to go. The final tally sits at 89KB. 

I was an early adopter of the browser-based version of SketchUp (I've still got files that have the "my SketchUp beta" watermark on them), so I've been at this for a while, and even I can still lose sight of the bigger picture and bog down a file with unnecessary guff. I think we're also all spoiled on larger hard drive sizes and file transfer services like WeTransfer and Drive that we don't see a large SKP as any big deal. I scoffed once at a YouTube video of someone proudly bringing the size of their file down to a few hundred kilobytes. Now, I understand. 

It's important that, when we pass on our knowledge to others, be it at work or through these forums or YouTube comments or wherever, that we emphasize simplicity and efficiency. Space-saving tricks like components should be introduced as early as possible, even if the other person doesn't grasp it right away. It will plant a seed in their mind that they don't have to model multiple identical versions of an object. It will teach them to think more laterally and embrace "creative laziness." 

Thanks for coming to my corner of the corner bar. 

Goodnight, and good luck.

DIY 3D Printing: A Memoir

Damn, I missed January. I had an entry in my drafts that was scheduled for around the last week, but 2018 has started off rather busy and hectic for me apart from getting two (count 'em, two) types of flu in the same month and about a fortnight apart. Anyway, that entry is still in the works and does need to get done as it's sort of my own State of the Union address, only with at least 90% less bullshit and 150% more diplomacy. Until then, here's a reply to a forum post on Thingiverse about building one's own 3D printer. It got a bit long-winded, I'll admit, but maybe it'll act as a little microcosm of what I do, how I do it, and why I don't take a fire axe to the damn things sometimes besides obvious reasons. 

I would like to 3D print a 3D printer.
Have you lost your damn mi--That sounds like a fun project you won't regret undertaking in any way, shape, or form... Honest.

Do I need any special hand skills?
No. If you've ever assembled a piece of furniture that didn't rely solely on gravity to hold it together, fixed a door hinge or desk drawer, checked the fuses in your car, wired a speaker, upgraded the RAM in your desktop, or have ever done a science project involving batteries and lightbulbs, you have literally all the skills you could possibly need to go ahead with this.

How much will it cost if filament to build it is 5 cents a gram?

This is tricky. As counter-intuitive as it may be to the best part of a 3D printer, I have to agree with an old coworker of mine and say the fewer 3D printed parts you're using to hold your machine together, the better. If they're not printed right, the instability will ruin your prints (and therefore you can't make your spares or replacement parts), plus factor in the time and energy into printing your own spare parts versus, say, waiting a day or two for a box of miscellaneous hardware to be dropped on your doorstep. 

Will it be very challenging?

Yes. You don't build a 3D printer to save time or even money. You build it for the customization and the learning experience, and the former is only the case if you need something very specific, like an extremely large build area or an experimental toolhead/extruder assembly. The market has reached a point to where many mid-range kits cost more than low-end, fully assembled printers (with very generous warranties), and you'll probably get more mileage out of the low-end premade unit than your DIY, if only at the start. 

Is there anything else I should know before undertaking this project?

A wise man once said art is never finished, only abandoned. In our fleet of 3D printers, there's a Prusa i3+ clone my boss built in college during a single wild and crazy night at an engineering conference. After sitting in a box in a basement for 18 months, he brought it in to help with our workflow. Needless to say, it needed a lot of work when he brought it in. Over literally the course of the next year, about a half-dozen of us worked on getting this thing up and running to where it wasn't making tumbleweeds anymore. We replaced at least half of its hardware (including the frame), reflashed the firmware countless times, replaced every electronic component except for 3 of the 5 stepper motors, and rewired it from the ground up at least twice. If this sounds like a waste of time and money, it may have been, but it's surprisingly reliable despite its looks to the contrary, and I can't tell you the volumes of information I learned that no class could ever prepare me for. I'd build more for fun in my spare time if I didn't enjoy drawing and painting more.

Any suggestions on which one to build?

Going back to what I said about building printers for fun, I'd really like to try a Delta printer someday, purely because I find their design fascinating. It's like watching some slinky alien insect build a nest. Otherwise, if I had to recommend a good jumping off point, just go with a Prusa clone; they're beyond commonplace and come from a variety of manufacturers, all of which are to the point where it's harder to find a bad one than a serviceable one. I'm actually working (for work) on a Lulzbot clone, which is basically a Prusa that's built like a tank. 

Don't say I didn't wa--HAVE FUN! SERIOUSLY!

Distro Fever

Thingiverse has recently been beset by some "enterprising" individuals and small groups who think spamming forums at best tangentially related to what they have to offer is a legitimate form of advertising in this day and age. Thingiverse is owned by Makerbot, in turn owned by Stratasys. It acts as a file repository for digital files created by its community for purposes of 3D printing, CNC, Laser-cutting, and many other forms of computer-aided manufacturing and rapid prototyping. There is no advertising on the site. 

Without getting into a long, drawn-out retrospective of what Linux is, one of the great aspects of Linus Torvalds' original source code is that it can be customized to whatever extent computer engineering allows. As a result of this, there are hundreds, if not thousands of individual "flavors" of Linux, with Android being the most widespread. The trouble this paradigm presents, however, is one of saturation. Operating Systems are vast technical undertakings, and barring anything simpler than a graphing calculator, they're not handled by small groups on their downtime. Debian, for example, is the culmination of thousands of hobbyists working piecemeal over many decades. The point is that while everyone starts somewhere, "humble beginnings" aren't as endearing a selling point as they once were when there were maybe a dozen computer manufacturers worldwide with virtually none of them having any interest in the consumer market. 

Okay, first big red flag. Never, ever, ever trust anyone who uses "Good day" as a greeting. I know it's more of a language barrier thing than anything else, but I've seen too many e-mail and telemarketing scams that use this slightly-broken English to ignore it. As a rule, "Good day" is a parting phrase, especially if you're Willy Wonka and/or you really want to stick it to somebody. Call it a pet peeve, but couple this with the fact this exact same message was posted in at least 8 different interest groups, and matters start looking more than a little shady, and we're only at the first line. 

What follows is a standard laundry list of claims. While many well-known Linux or other cross-platform applications such as OpenSCAD, FreeCAD, Blender, and Inkscape are as free of charge as they are easily available, certain flavors of Linux like to separate themselves from the endless cacophony by offering included bundles of programs. It's more a stamp of approval than anything meant to be convenient. By having a program preinstalled, you're showing that it's passed your various benchmarks and is guaranteed to work, whereas some Linux flavors may not play nice with others for the sake of favoring a different suite of programs. Again, there's nothing wrong with that (though some argue whether or not it violates the various open source licenses some programs are made under, but those cases are few and far between) and it's honestly very convenient, no more guesswork for one's workflow. 

Then there's this part about giving out free goods and services:

Along with the "Good Day" greeting and the faux pas that is forum spam, another red flag is unqualified promises. Something I used to see on Yahoo! Answers all the time was someone asking a fairly vague question about Risc Management or Viral Marketing or whatever, all wrapped up with the promise, "Help me out and I'll give you anything you want."

 

Yes, yes, I know they're just a phishing operation trying to get my e-mail and can't REALLY get me anything I want, but that's precisely my point. These InventOS yahoos answering the prayers of designers and makers are making the same vague, unqualified offer that a con artist does. If your product, an operating system, is still in the alpha stage as you say, are you sure you've got the resources to back up this 

Let's start with the elephant in the room concerning the economics of this claim. Yes, everybody starts somewhere, and of course you often have to spend money in order to make money, but there's a fine line between a free sample and a free ride, to say nothing of not being able to spell freeloader without free... and load. 

While the technology behind 3D printing is nothing new, with roots going back to the early 1970s, this recent wave of "Open Source Prosumerism" that started with the original Makerbot Kickstarter campaign and the explosive popularity of the Arduino microcontroller is still fairly young. We've had a lot of promising startups rise as quickly as they fall. Many a career has been made and ruined on the power of a few calculated risks. Still, a broad range of events across the board plus a little common sense have given this particular subculture of designers/inventors/makers/artisans/what-have-you a better perspective on how to market themselves. 

Your skills have a value, even if the only cost is your time. 

Offering a service of value for free drives down that value for everyone else in that profession. It's kind of ironic that the open source nature of the software you're using to make your OS (which comes prepackaged with applications other people have made) has seemingly driven you to offer physical printing services and design consultation for free. 

As of this writing, they have no responded, and I rather doubt they will. 

Actually, they're not offering everything for free (they're just asking for volunteers to help them back up their claims). I don't personally know of any Linux distribution that makes use of Patreon, but it's not necessarily a red flag. Ubuntu has a similar business model, offering its software for free but asking fees for technical support. Google doesn't offer Android as a standalone download, instead licensing it to hardware manufacturers with part of the sales helping support further developments. So, technical support and customer service has a dollar value, but a physical print of a design someone has volunteered to me is free, so long as...? 

So, is InventOS a scam? Probably not, but they sure act like it. Between the broad, sweeping claims, sketchy "marketing" efforts, too-good-to-be-true promises of free lunches, and wait-and-see attitude towards valid questions of their business model, it's certainly hard to tell their message apart from the many offers from Nigerian diplomats trapped aboard the ISS who need me to buy them 1,000 spark plugs with unsigned checks they'll mail me before getting sent off to out of state PO boxes. More likely is that they're simply inept. 

By the way, here's what their community forums look like as of today: