Fork and Merge
If there is a design and you want to improve on it, you have to remix it creating your own copy of the design. This is basically a hard fork. Then there is no way for you to submit your changes to be merged into the original design if both the author and yourself so choose.
This leads to fragmentation in designs where one has rounded edges but the original design doesn't, or even just finding the different versions can't happen all in one place.
How would one go about implementing merging for 3D designs to make it more collaborative?
RE: Fork and Merge
If the original model creator has licensed it for such use, they can certainly make the source files (e.g. Blender, Fusion360, OpenSCAD) available to others. The decision is ultimately theirs. If you're making modifications to a model without consideration of the original content creator's wishes, you're on your own. In other words: If you're respecting the open source licensing, there's a process that avoids any need to remix the original in anything other than the source format.
RE: Fork and Merge
- Rather than publishing your own copy, just send them the updated files and they can upload them.
- github.com or gitlab.org can be used for any file types and both can preview STL objects in their web UIs. The benefit there is that you can do true forking and merging and the change history is kept in the commit and PR history. This is an extra tool the modelers have to understand and commit to using though.