SparkFun in 3D
An update on our efforts to provide 3D models of popular SparkFun parts
In the past couple of weeks you may have noticed these icons popping up on product pages all over the catalog:
So what's it all about? Well you may remember a news post from April where I mentioned that myself and two other SparkFun folks were going to amass a collection of 3D models for customers to use in their project planning. We even invited you to join in on our GitHub repository. Well it's been a few months now and things are really cookin'!
We have over 60 products (and a ton of components) modeled in a variety of formats, and are continuing to expand the collection every day. We're also making it easier to find our 3D models by marking products on the website that have been modeled. If you see the above "3D" icon on any of our product pages (where the RoHS and OSHW logos usually live) then that means you can find a model of that product in our GitHub repo.
At the moment, the repo is structured in roughly the same organization as the website. For instance, if you were looking for the pcDuino, then you could find it under:
sparkfun/3D_Models/tree/master/Products/Dev Tools/PCDuino/
As we get it filled in with more products and solidify the file structure, we'll start adding direct links from the product pages to the models.
If you haven't checked out the collection yet, go ahead and take a look! We (and you) are adding new models all the time. We know some of you have been doing 3D CAD for a long time and some of you don't know where to start, so feel free to discuss and trade tips/tricks in the comments section below. We hope to provide some tutorials for 3D modeling and prototyping as well, so look forward to that!
This is a great start and we're psyched that so many of you have contributed to the repository. Prolific contributors like Carrigan, brianrg and solarguy (just to name a few) have made this process a breeze. None of your efforts have gone unnoticed, we're super grateful for the hard work you're all putting in. This collection of 3D models will be the seed for some very cool projects down the line.
