Associated Parts linked similar to Remixes

New Features Ideas
1

I’d like a tab in the details where I could link to models/things that are tangential to my 3d model but not necessarily a remix. such as components in a larger BOM or something (including parts that are made by others). We can do it for remixes, but in this case some of them just aren’t remixes.

I know I could just put a link in the details, but a tab like remixes that shows a thumbnail preview would be handy.

Unless there is a trick I am not aware of that does this.

example
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For example, say I make a bunch of accessories for a Dummy 13. I could post a link to a bunch of useful Dummy 13 models or parts used in my example photos.

2

Just put the links to those in the description

3

I said that… But those links don’t create previews.

4

Whoops sorry about that

I have occasionally seen people just post a picture of that model in the slideshow which could do what you’re wanting, although it obviously isn’t a great fix as that doesn’t function as a link.

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5

I was playing around with it last night and found that you can insert images from other Thingiverse things in the text blocks of a thing and have the images work as links.

You can insert a link with either Markdown or with HTML. HTML has the advantage of being able to size the image, while Markdown does not allow you to control the image size. Markdown’s advantage is that the text you need to insert to do this is more compact.

Doing this manually is not ideal. But if this sort of thing is really important to you, it is an option. Opens yourself up to a bunch of maintenance as those images and links will break if the linked thing gets deleted. But if you are only linking to other things that you yourself have published, it seems pretty workable.

Let me know if you would like to see how that works and I’ll write something up and will set up an example on one of my things.

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6

I think that is a latter resort option. Preferably having it built into the user interface is ideal.

What would be fine with me is something like the forums, where you copy the link and it automatically creates a little thumbnail. That’s quick and easy.

7

Ok. Check out this thing: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7385251

Scroll down to the Other brick buildings you might like section of the page where I have added links to other things.

Normally, Markdown does not let you size images. But you can leverage how Thingiverse displays images to size the images with Markdown. Because that works, I won’t describe the HTML way of doing this here; we’ll just cover the Markdown method.

You need the address of the thing to which you are linking. Navigate to the thing and copy the address from your browser’s address field. Paste the address into a text editor. The address will look like this:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7333203

You need the address of the image you want to use. Navigate to the thing, find an image, right-click on it and select Copy image address. Paste the address into a text editor. The address will look like this:

https://resize.thingiverse.com/?url=https://cdn.thingiverse.com/assets/62/15/23/d8/8f/photo_01.png&w=1024&h=1024&fit=inside&n=-1

Note the &w= and &h= parameters near the end of the image address. This is where you can control the size of the image. I do not know how Thingiverse is interpreting these values as they do not behave as you would expect. For example, you can set an image to be 1200 wide and 10 high, and it will pick just one of those values and size the image proportionally. It sort of seems like it is picking the “most reasonable” value, but I’ve not poked into the page code to see how it determines that. I edit these values to something that looks good as a preview image – in my examples here, I change &w=1024&h=1024 to &w=300&h=300 and that looks pretty good.

In your text editor, change the &w=1024&h=1024 values to something that looks good to you.

Here is the Markdown syntax for images with links:

[![alt_text](image_url)](link_url "roll_over_text")

alt_text is text that a browser may display if the image cannot be shown.

image_url is the address of the image.

link_url is the address of the link.

roll_over_text is text that the browser may display when the user hovers over the image.

The Thingiverse site does not seem to show the alt_text and roll_over_text. I suspect that there is some JavaScript on the site that is overriding the default browser behavior, but I’ve not looked at the code to find it.

Using the syntax line above as a template, replace the values with your text and the links you pasted into your text editor.

For the first item in my example list, the Markdown code looks like this:

[![HO Scale Bank of Olar, South Carolina](https://resize.thingiverse.com/?url=https://cdn.thingiverse.com/assets/62/15/23/d8/8f/photo_01.png&w=300&h=300&fit=inside&n=-1)](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7341618 "HO Scale Bank of Olar, South Carolina")

To add the plain text above each image, I just type the text and then add the HTML linebreak <br> element after the text, like this:

HO Scale Bank of Olar, South Carolina<br>[![HO Scale Bank of Olar, South Carolina](https://resize.thingiverse.com/?url=https://cdn.thingiverse.com/assets/62/15/23/d8/8f/photo_01.png&w=300&h=300&fit=inside&n=-1)](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7341618 "HO Scale Bank of Olar, South Carolina")

Note that the text above the image is not a link. You could make it a link, but I’ve not done so.

I separate each item with two Enter keystrokes so that the code block is reasonably legible. The Markdown for the four images in my example looks like this:

HO Scale Bank of Olar, South Carolina<br>[![HO Scale Bank of Olar, South Carolina](https://resize.thingiverse.com/?url=https://cdn.thingiverse.com/assets/62/15/23/d8/8f/photo_01.png&w=300&h=300&fit=inside&n=-1)](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7341618 "HO Scale Bank of Olar, South Carolina")

HO Scale Garage Remix<br>[![HO Scale Garage Remix](https://resize.thingiverse.com/?url=https://cdn.thingiverse.com/assets/7d/2a/19/84/aa/photo_01.png&w=300&h=300&fit=inside&n=-1 )](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7333203 "HO Scale Garage Remix")

HO Scale Small Office<br>[![HO Scale Small Office](https://resize.thingiverse.com/?url=https://cdn.thingiverse.com/assets/84/c1/c8/40/66/01.png&w=300&h=300&fit=inside&n=-1)](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6538001 "HO Scale Small Office")

HO Scale St. Mary's, Ontario, Creamery<br>[![HO Scale St. Marys, Ontario, Creamery](https://resize.thingiverse.com/?url=https://cdn.thingiverse.com/assets/68/28/f9/6d/43/photo_01.png&w=300&h=300&fit=inside&n=-1)](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7372137 "HO Scale St. Marys, Ontario, Creamery")

I agree that a built-in feature on the site would be the better way of doing this, but this works if it is really important to you to have this.

In putting this example together, though, I ran into the “page loses my last edit” problem every single time I went to edit my thing. And refreshing just the tab did not fix it this time – I had to clear my entire browser cache each time I went to edit the page again. They really need to fix that before they focus on new features!

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8

Now that I am thinking more about it, being able to link to a page like McMaster Carr, for screws and what not, would be cool, too. But every site has their own quirks.

DigiKey, Arduino, and the dreaded Amazon too, I suppose.

I doubt that’s feasible in the same way as linking to a thingi.

9

You can link anywhere with the method described above. You’ll want to host the images somewhere, perhaps as files in your thing, so you can control their size as the size control described above is specific to Thingiverse. But you can insert an image and make it a link to anywhere using the technique described above. At least until Thingiverse prohibits linking outside of Thingiverse.

10

I very much doubt they’ll prohibit linking to sites outside of thingiverse…

instructables, printables, digikey, arduino, youtube etc.

there’s a lot of sites that are very helpful that people routinely link too

they would lose a large customer base if they removed that.

11

It’s not that they would remove it. I am talking about if they made a link box, similar to the Remixes tab above, linking to files on site is easy. I don’t know enough about web formatting to know how easy it would be to create a similarly formatted preview link box for external sites.

Putting a shortcut, sure. But a formatted link might require tailoring per each website. That’s all I mean.

12

Good point. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that. I think I was thinking, or I think that I think I think I was thinking that I thought I was thinking, that Thingiverse may not appreciate me linking to things the way I describe here.

Inserting unexpected Markdown and HTML - that is, Markdown or HTML that is not generated from a button in the editor UI - into text fields may be frowned upon.

I should note that the technique I describe here does open you up to future maintenance. If Thingiverse ever changes the syntax for addresses of things or their images, all of your manually inserted links are going to break.

But I like maintenance. Makes me look busy.

13

Nearly all of my designs are made from scratch. I was inspired by someone else’s design in any way, I add it as a remix. I may have been inspired by another design, or applied something I learned from another design, or used another design as a sub-component in mine. They can all be remixes. Thingiverse lets you add multiple designs in the remix list.

The limitation is that Thingiverse doesn’t let you list remix sources from outside Thingiverse. Printables does. You can list remixes from anywhere in your Printables model.

14

I am a stickler for names. If your going to call it “remixes” then they should be remixes. I am not so keen on putting parts that are associated, but not remixes, in the remix tab. In that instance, perhaps “Remixes” should be renamed to “Remixes and Related” or something.