GitHub announces 3D File Diffs

Not sure why but from just reading the title I was expecting a new way to view diffs of normal files in some funky 3D mode

This is a small step into a big open field. Collaboration in the hardware design space is moving slowly. It&#x27;s not even at the SVN&#x2F;CVS level now.<p>Has an architect ever forked an open source building? Has an biomedical engineer ever forked a open source prosthetic hip implant? Has a civil engineer forked an open source bridge? They will.

I would unironically love a GitHub developer&#x27;s conference where they get to do a keynote presenting all the awesome features they churn out at record pace.<p>I feel more people who aren&#x27;t unrepentant nerds should get to see what these guys (and gals) are doing.<p>---<p><i>EDIT:</i> They could just do something simple at a local, informal event (say a bar) with a few dozens of people. it doesn&#x27;t have to be something huge.<p>It&#x27;d also be a great way for everyone at GitHub to get some training in making and delivering presentations, and it&#x27;s great to have on your resumé.<p>I&#x27;d definitely want to try something like that out as a CEO, and I imagine it&#x27;d make it even more fun to work at a playful place like GitHub.

A neat feature but I wish they had support for 3d source file types instead of exported &quot;binary&quot;, for lack of a better term, file types. If you wanted to truly open source your mechanical project you&#x27;d need to add an extra step to delete the previously exported STL and export a new one every time you commit. You also lose color&#x2F;texture data when you export to STL.

Cool, that&#x27;s one wishlist feature down.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5519676" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=5519676</a><p>(hehe &quot;Wow. That&#x27;s a stupidly large amount of work, barfed out with seeming ignorance to the cost of implementation.&quot; Yes, well.... libffi helps out a lot.)

This is nice, but, it feels like a splashy visual tool that took a lot of dev resources and will only be used significantly by a small user base. I personally feel that they would make a lot more users happy by spending a little on improving their existing code diff interface. Some ideas:<p>- make the context button &quot;...&quot; for the code diff actually do something<p>- side-by-side diffs<p>- syntax highlighting

They had diffs for typefaces at some point: <a href="http://i.liketightpants.net/and/how-it-has-come-about-that-code-hosting-site-github-offers-visualisations-of-typeface-development" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.liketightpants.net&#x2F;and&#x2F;how-it-has-come-about-that-c...</a><p>I originally suggested it to them, and was kind of sad that they did away with this feature—that being said, it makes sense they want to streamline their platform.<p>Then, I’ve found it hard to create these kind of things myself, selfhostable FOSS solutions like Gitorious don’t offer enough possibilites to build upon (no real API)

I wonder if they have any plans to add support for other 3D filetypes (.ma, fbx, obj, etc)? It would be great to use this with more organic VFX-type models where some of the intricate detail updates are hard to discern at first glance.<p>Blue sky thinking, it would even be awesome to have something like this as a plugin in Maya where we could load in a previous version of the model and onion-skin between them with a slider like in the demo.<p>Going to check out the links in the article. Very cool!

This is so great! I&#x27;m always working with STL&#x27;s and always asking myself, &quot;what&#x27;s different in these models?&quot; I&#x27;d love to see meta data and other 3D file types like VRMLs or SolidWorks parts included in the future as well.

Wow, I love how Github is transforming into the a great tool maker for the digital world.

This certainly makes Github a viable option compared to Thingiverse. Hopefully we&#x27;ll see OpenSCAD file support in the future!

Meanwhile, still no side by side diffs :(

And.... they&#x27;re down.<p>edit: back up yay!

This is great! Historically, studios has shunned dvcs; github moving in his direction - even if motivated by personal 3d printing projects - may open some eyes and change some minds.

In a similar vein: <a href="http://3drepo.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;3drepo.org&#x2F;</a>

A friend and I built <a href="http://www.bld3r.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bld3r.com</a> as a vastly more open 3d file sharing platform than thingiverse. We welcome this move, as we prefer files to be hosted on open platforms like github. I thought I&#x27;d plug the site for anyone who wants an alternative. We are still in beta, but are finishing that soon.

Mike Skalnik (post author) will be at RobotsConf <a href="http://robotsconf.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;robotsconf.com</a> and available to talk about this and other similar initiatives going on (make-me, etc). Still a few tickets left. Saw a couple comments about conferences and such, figured it would be worth mentioning.

I wonder what percent of Github users store 3D files, to make this worth the effort. I imagine less than 0.5% if that?

I haven&#x27;t seen anyone mention binary space partitioning since using quake3&#x27;s bsp toolchain a few years ago.<p><a href="http://www.mralligator.com/q3/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mralligator.com&#x2F;q3&#x2F;</a>

I wonder if this feature is targeting the growing consumer 3D printing market. Being the goto place for collaborating, and versioning, 3D designs would be a good play for them.

It could be great to have something like this for SVG!

Can we have side-by-side diffs of code first, please?

this is great, comes just in time as I&#x27;m desiging a custom 3d scientific part. <a href="https://github.com/ityonemo/imsocultured/blob/master/device.stl" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ityonemo&#x2F;imsocultured&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;device....</a>

Does anybody know of a 2D diff for diagrams? a lot like <a href="http://www.diffplug.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.diffplug.com&#x2F;</a>

This is very cool. Rather obviates my own site. (<a href="http://fabfabbers.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fabfabbers.com</a>) Ho hum ;)

This is aweomse. It&#x27;s a small, but critical step in making the design for things versionable and forkable.

Hmm, github.com is throwing a 500 error at the moment. I wonder if this is somehow related?

In other (possibly related) news, the entire website is now throwing an error.

And they still didn&#x27;t implemented a visualization for SVG ?

Sometimes more is less

awesome addition..althgh am little confused looking for changes..but revision wise looks quite descriptive....

Now I&#x27;m feeling in the future

Oh Github, you&#x27;re wonderful