[VLM]

The site is 404 for me... Is there a repo? Google didn't find anything useful.

Needs an ecosystem not just free downloads. If you want free downloads the competition already has that. Woodsmith Shop is a PBS network show with free plans downloads, some of which look pretty nice, although I've not tried to actually build anything from those plans.

As an amateur wood butcher I don't need to download someone else's design to make a very basic boring desk. (whoops edited to make clear I'm not implying their desk is boring, just my simple ones are) What I would benefit from is a simple script that given some criteria such as desired tabletop height, or load limit, or wood thickness, or whatever, out squirts a file with artistic proportions and stylish artistic design and reasonable engineering that I could then cut.

Or squirts out an error message. "warning: 5/8 plywood for a 8 foot wide desk? That exceeds wobbly limitation. Use --force option if you are crazy"

I want to run a script "opendesk --height '40 inch' --toplong '48 inch' --topshort '24 inch' --woodtype '5/8 plywood' and pipe the output into a laser cutter file. Or, frankly, just output a PDF for me to cut manually.

[thruflo]

Hey, we're working on this with http://www.madeonjupiter.com/ -- see the parameterised OpenDesk design walkthrough http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y-ubblgDmc

With SpokeCreator and similar tools, it is a matter of mastering a design as a kind of logic network. I blogged on it here: http://thruflo.com/post/56330542825/inside-the-distributed-m...

[grey-area]

Needs an ecosystem not just free downloads. If you want free downloads the competition already has that.

I believe that's exactly what they're building here. See the cached link to their website from singold. I agree an ecosystem is important, but that's what they're trying to provide.

Their desks are not at all boring, I think they're very nice thoughtful designs, and they're set at certain proportions and with certain materials for a reason - because distorting the proportions, wood thickness etc would mess up the designs in various ways. Your request for a tool which you can fiddle with all the parameters of a desk presupposes that design is some sort of gloss that is added to a final product rather than a solution to a given set of parameters, so I doubt it'll ever be realised. If you think it can be, please do go ahead and make it, but setting up these concrete designs which exist against a hypothetical tool which doesn't exist is hardly fair.

What I want is what this website delivers (or does when the site actually works) - beautiful designs which I can ask someone to make, or make myself if I'm so inclined. If I was furnishing an office I'd look here before buying something from IKEA for example, these desks look sturdy, functional and yet elegant - everything I'd want in office furniture.

My only hesitation is that it undervalues design somewhat, but they could possibly introduce a marketplace for designs at some point too, if this takes off - obviously the CNC machine owners would make money, so perhaps the idea is that design shops could make their own furniture and sell it, as well as giving away the plans?

[thruflo]

Thanks for such an insightful and supportive comment :)

I think you're right that the free design / pay to get made model does to some degree undervalue the design. It only really fitted for us because we a) had the designs and b) wanted to explore the local making proposition.

With other designers and ranges, we see a model where designers can name their price for the use of their design / IP. In fact, with the current OpenDesk system, a design fee is already included in the price to "get it made".

We're also interested in designers controlling their distribution: the territories they want to sell to, with a price breakdown they control.

[fest]

The tools for this are already here. Check out OpenSCAD. It's a parametric 3D modeling tool, which lets you create 3D models using code (loops, variables, math functions are available). It can export projections of your models in DXF too.