With “ANGER and REGRETS”, I hereby permanently close this Flight Sim 3D Models project
This page will be kept, and the GitHub repository the links point to will also be kept, unless the new owner of GitHub Microsoft pisses me off. But I make no promise for how long I will keep them up. I might delete them just because I rolled off the wrong side of the bed one day, or it takes up space for other things I want to do.
Just look at the quote in the following screenshot and you will get a glimpse of why I am angry and closing this project. I mean, come on... somebody is actually arguing that I don’t own the copyrights to the CAD files I created from scratch???!!! That doesn’t even compute! That’s some twisted nonsense.
In case it’s hard to read for you in the screenshot, let me reproduce his post in the entirety.
“I feel that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how this all works. You claim that because you drew the CAD files based on the genuine parts, then that grants you a copyright to your CAD files, and that if anyone uses it to produce a commercial product, by law you deserve a cut.
This is no different than saying that if you bought an iPhone legally, then created a CAD file for it, then somehow you're granted a copyright to that CAD file and deserve a cut if Motorola uses it to manufacture their own iPhone clone. It doesn't; both you and Motorola would be infringing on Apple's design and copyright.
You said that a Chinese seller has been tracing your 3D models and using them for commercial products and that this is violating your copyright. But what you fail to see is that you've done the same thing; you 'traced' a physical product designed by someone else, and think that because you drew the model 'from scratch' (you didn't, you copied the physical product), it entitles you to a cut of any profits made using it.
It's not illegal to measure out dimensions for a physical product, or to even create a CAD drawing for it; after all, you're just taking really precise measurements. But you can't claim a copyright on the drawing, because you didn't design the product. You try to make the distinction between a CAD file and the design, but they're one and the same; the CAD file is the design. Reverse engineering the 3D model using the physical product doesn't mean that your drawing is suddenly granted a different copyright from the one that Lockheed Martin already has.
Ultimately, your entire argument hinges on your belief that you own a copyright for your CAD files. Once you realize that you do not, everything you said simply falls apart.”
Remember, I only claim copyrights to the CAD files I created by measuring genuine F16 parts I obtained legally, but not the copyrights to the design of F16 parts. Those copyrights to the design of F16 parts belong to Lockheed Martin. Definitely not me. I expect idiots on the Internet, but even I do not expect such idiotic and incoherent arguments. I suspect this is just some typical Internet Troll. Just create a free account spill out any nonsense, nobody knows whoever you are, and there is no shame, no consequence, whatsoever. If I don’t own the copyrights to the files I created on my free time, then who owns them? It’s quite simple. I did the work, I own the rights to the result of that work, unless somebody else pays for them. Here’s the link to the original thread. You might need an account and log in to ViperPits in order to read them.
Now, you get a little idea why I am closing this project permanently? There is more, read on.
I wrote Hempstick, because I couldn’t find a good firmware that satisfies my requirements. I wanted a lot more things than OpenSource firmware out there offer, see the main Hempstick page on what these are. I achieved several of those important requirements with the first release of Hempstick (and the last release ;-). Chief among them is the 1ms guaranteed maximum latency. But I also knew one other thing that prevented me from taking full advantage of that 1ms latency firmware -- switch bouncing. That is, if I have to wait 20ms for a switch to finish bouncing, that renders what I have achieved with the 1ms guarantee in the firmware completely useless! I mean, now it’s 21ms. Doh! It’s still a very respectable latency guarantee, make not mistake, but .... not good enough for me! That’s not what I set out to do! (two+ years later Razer started pitching 1ms firmware in their mouse/keyboard, but I know they had this on their sight years ago too, as I could see their move to producing their own keys instead of Cherry everybody else use, and eventually moved to optical keyboard switches; that clearly tells me that Razer and I both see eye to eye on this same problem independently.). So, I set out to solve this problem as well. The result, still on going in prototype stage) is what I have been working on for the past few years namely, the Hall Effect Ministick, Force Generation Rudder Core, and optical 8way HAT switch (none of these three are published, reasons provided later). But I needed a test platform for these stuff. What better than using my all time favorite fighter jet -- F16, as a model for my test platform?
I started this Flight Sim 3D Models project because I spend a week on ViperPits digging through their extensive, yet full of gaps, but completely unorganized documents, comments, and Q/As for some very basic F16 dimensions, like the distance between the two side walls around the ejection seat. I couldn’t find a coherent answer. One says this, the other says that, etc. etc. I need a lot of dimensions to construct anything, not doubts. Asking one dimension at a time is not viable. Not to mention chances are good that dimensions coming from different sources are likely to be incompatible with each other. What do you expect? I mean, it’s just a bunch of mostly stuff hobbyists jotted down and posted. Most of these guys are not trained in drafting, design, nor manufacturing, and a lot of them measure stuff using tape measure (the best precision they can give you is somewhere around 1/32”). Nobody ever gone through them and organize them in any way. There are reasons why we have professional librarians. And ViperPits admins are certainly no librarians, nor are they supposed to be. So, I started this project by buying genuine F16 parts with legal methods, hand measured them, and construct detailed 3D models, and OpenSourced them with Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, International License. I want those models, you get a free ride. However, the order of construction of the models are not solely based on my needs. A lot of times they are based on what I can get my hands on, and what YOU, the users, would be interested. A lot of times, it’s like I got a new genuine part that I actually don’t need, but I pay top dollars for them on eBay bidding anyway. I got it in hand, and I could wait for the weekend to start modeling it, even though I really don’t need that model.
On ViperPits, it was originally received well. Every time I released something new, put a notice on ViperPits, the traffic to my website spiked like crazy. I didn’t do this for money (too little money to be worth my while). So, I posted publicly on ViperPits, several times, that the reason I released it with non-commercial license, instead of the more liberal commercial license, is to prevent big companies from swooping in and take it all without acknowledging the contribution of the community (happened to me before), and if you want a commercial license, let me know, I will give you one at the cost of any amount YOU DEEM APPROPRIATE, and you donate that to ViperPits for the running of that website, in your name. And if you were already a donor, that counts toward the payment too. But you will still need to get an explicit agreement/license. In essence, I intended to remove all the incentives, at least monetarily, for stealing these 3D models. You can go legit for practically nothing. And to show you I don’t want anything other than YOU RESPECTING MY COPYRIGHTS, I didn’t want to get involved in any amount of money -- no money will even flow through me.
Unfortunately, there has always been a Chinese guy copying my works, and others’ works as well (as I predicted) for commercial purposes. And of source, I know some more unscrupulous people are there copying and stealing in some dark corners of the Internet, but as long as they are not doing it in the open and in my face, I don’t wanna know, and I don’t care about what I don’t know (well, I can’t anyway). Somebody else accused that Chinese guy of stealing and he got banned from ViperPits. Life goes on. I continue to publish. He continue to steal, but now in the background. Then an admin started “collaborating” with his “good friend”, that exact Chinese guy, and setup shop to sell parts the Chinese guy made on ViperPits. After more than one year of waiting for that admin to slip up and post something that I can identify as a copy of mine, I found it and I decided to raise hell on ViperPits. They did not resolve “the problem” to my satisfaction. Basically, two admins reiterated the usual spiel of respecting others’ copyrights and other usual Internet trolls telling me “... Boo hoo..., you published on the Internet, you should expect stealing... this thread is just BS. We all steal from Lockheed anyway. etc.” And then nothing, silence. Of course, exactly as I expected -- just don’t reply on it for a few days, and it will roll off the news, then you can actually go in and delete that thread without anybody noticing it -- typical Internet forum tactics. Maybe I expect too much from people. But, it’s not like I am naive enough to expect no stealing. Read the original posting below on this page and you would know I fully expected, and predicted, the Chinese are going to come and steal them all. But I do expect at least admins do not have cavalier attitude toward copyrights, and absolutely not engaging in dodgy ventures. This is the Internet, you expect idiots. You expect assholes. You expect even terrorists. You don’t like it? You can leave. I leave. You can’t make me stay!
The funny thing of it all is that that admin could have just dropped a message to me and asked for a license. I would have GLADLY given him a commercial license at no charge since he is already a donor of VIperPits, until a year ago when he posted “his” all metal HUD replica for sale. I didn’t even suspect anything, I even posted a praise of it. Then, the Dutch guy who previously accused the Chinese guy of stealing his models asked the critical question -- “Is this made in China?” The admin had to admit that his “good friend, XXX”, that Chinese guy, made it. There, I just made a fool of myself -- I just praised the good works of the guy who stole from me. I never suspected this admin at all. From then on, he’s put under a microscope. From his video of the HUD, analyzed frame by frame, I could see that thing was definitively derived from my model -- everything I didn’t model, he didn’t have (it’s still a work in progress model, I never finish all of it; some small non-essential parts are not modeled), and some idiosyncrasies/mistakes I made in this complex multi-body model are all present. But that’s still quite circumstantial (just like the Dutch guy accused him of, when I asked him for evidence; I do believe him though) I still did not have definitive evidences to accuse him.
And the other funny thing? Through it all... I pretty much named the admin of stealing or be complicit on his “partner in crime” stealing without actually spelling his name/handle, but nobody ever asked me of any evidence! Either they all know it’s true, or they don’t want to know because they already made up their mind. Hey, somebody else doing “the thing” a lot of them all wanted to do but are not skilled enough or too thin skinned to do. Oh ya? Too cynical? Just think what vicious things people do under Internet anonymity! People are more prone to do things they normally wouldn’t, including stealing, when there is practically no consequence -- just sign up for another free email and register again.
What do you expect? Or what would be a satisfactory outcome to you? You might ask?
Simple. Clearly, if what I suspect is true, the admin in question has demonstrated that he’s unfit to be an admin. At least he should be stripped of the admin position, if not banned. Second, he should be barred from selling “his products” on ViperPits if he’s not banned. It’s that simple. A forum cannot and should not be seen to “endorse” or “tolerate” copyright violation if the forum is there to facilitate sharing of knowledge/skills/camaraderie. We all secretly tolerate questionable and liberal copying, because there is no clear line that one can define for too much copying, not to mention different upbringings and societies have different accepted standards. But, a community has to at least been seen to not only foster respect of copyrights, it has to be seen to fighting stealing, in other words establishing some trust. The mere fact of stealing from each other breaks all that, and cast doubts and suspicions, casting a huge shadow hanging over the community. Even mere suspicion would do the same damages. Before I fired off the shot across the bow, I already heard rumor mills going around about people distancing themselves from that admin even after years of “friendship” and meeting each other in pit meetings. You can argue that accusations of stealing in the past (and in the future) have always resulted in a lot of hurt feelings, and so on and so forth. But the fact is that the damage is already done by the mere fact of suspicion itself, not to mention evidences of stealing. For instance, I stopped publishing anything OpenSource for over a year before I raised hell on ViperPits. I actually do not expect “they” would expel that admin in question. I know several admins are “personal friends” of that one. I would actually be surprised if he were expelled. Then why good would it do for raising hell and accusation? He ruined my passion and fun. I shot back. Now at least the “suspicion” is in the open. He will always walk the pit meeting thinking what does that “look” mean? Does he know? His products don’t sell well, is it because people know and are boycotting (unless the sell well). If his product sell well, I am right in leaving and not publishing my models anymore anyway.
For the past year, every time I sit down and wanted to do some 3D models for F16 parts, I think like this:
Why bother? The Chinese guy will just steal it, and the admin guy will just sell it to others in my face. It’s like I am working for them for free. It kills your passion like a bucket of chilled water, no pun intended, and ruined all the fun.
You don’t get to have what I produced last year. That is the consequence you have to suffer from such stealing and deafening silence of ViperPits. If you think you keep silence and peace then it would not affect you, you might be right. But I know you are just avoiding the worst of social conflicts, and other consequences be damned.
I am not angry with that Chinese guy. He doesn’t know better. I am, however, angry with that admin. He should know better. He is supposed to set an example, and police the forum. But what an example he set? I am also angry with the community in general, particular some with cavalier attitude toward copyrights for tolerating such glaring violations of copyrights amongst themselves, and general hand waving dismissing any accusation of copyright violation.
One weakness of the OpenSource ideology is the enforcement problem. It relies on a community to project and nurture the copyrights. Who wants to spend hard earned money for the works you produced and shared for free? What GNU? EFF? Creative Commons? They would only if it’s a seminar or test case for them. But your garden variety IP theft, particularly from countries with lax laws and the judiciaries are not independent enough from the executive branch (and dictators). Richard Stallman might be right in insisting on allowing commercial activities on OpenSourced software. My experiment makes me believe that “non-commercial” variants like the one I chose does not work in practice. Those thieves in every society won’t let you. They will steal it. So, what’s the conclusion? Either you go all the way GPL, MIT, BSD licenses, or you go commercial. The half way measure of attribution non-commercial is completely unworkable in practice.
So, for the last year, EVERY TIME I opened the 3D model directory and Solidworks, I switched to work on something else. The good news is that it does not kill my passion for aviation. I am still working on flight simulator parts, better parts, like optical 8 way HAT switch, Hall Ministick that can be used as a drop-in replacement for F16 throttle parts, force-generation RudderCore, force-generation control stick/throttle, FPGA-based firmware/software, Linux drivers, etc. In essence, attempting to create a set of better control stick, throttle, and rudder controls for flight simulators. But for sure my passion of this 3D model project has died in 0 degree Kelvin cosmic cold death.
The quickest way to kill off an OpenSource project and passion is to steal them. Then you go on the forum and flaunt right in the authors face that you are stealing them blind. What are you going to do? Sue them? You sure are going to lose that suit in China, and your money too.
I will keep the existing GitHub repo alive for your access as long as the new owner of GitHub, Microsoft, does not piss me off (not likely, but you never know that about my neighbors; I live in their neck of woods). I have already added a new Git mirror of this repo on www.hempstick.org. This new mirror will receive new updates. But this new mirror is now a private repo. for people I “approve” only, not accessible to the public. Hence, not part of this project, nor are the contents there published in a Creative Commons license.
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Please note that in protest of the passing of article 11 and 13 of the new EU law, Copyright in the Digital Single Market, passed by the EU Parliament on 9/12/2018. I have taken down and deleted links to Kumrik’s (an EU citizen) knobs 3D models from this web site. This is so that I have no EU copyrighted material on this site that I am incapable of verifying Kumrik’s claim of the copyright. Sorry Kumrik, my trust in your claim is not good enough in the eyes of the laws. My safest bet is not to get tangled up in any of that possibility. The only way I can do so is really not host anybody else’s materials. If I want to protest against some law, I’d better not be in violation of the law.
I have also decided not grant EU citizens and residents any license to use any of the my 3D models. That is, anybody in the world are granted the same Creative Common Non-Commerical International license, but EU citizens and residents are granted none. I am not sure whether that works. But I don’t care. It’s just a protest.
I could add a simple button asking whether you are EU citizens or residents before granting you access to this website, thus if you lie about it, it technically would constitute circumventing a copyright protection mechanism and in violation of DMCA. Not that I am going to spend my hard earned money to sue you about it. And, my purpose is not to get my EU friends in trouble, but a protest.
EU citizens and residents may still continue to use this website and copyrighted materials, but please note that you are using them illegally as you are not granted any license to use.
I know, it’s a bit of intellectual masturbation. However, I do what I can do as a non-EUer. And it’s up to you EUers to pressure your bought lawmakers to change the laws.
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This page lists some of the 3D models I made for sharing with the flight sim community.
Please note that, this site is mainly for OpenSource Hempstick USB controller firmware. The 3D models are tacked on. So, you will find the 3D models directly inside this 3D model page and its child pages (listed at the end of this page as hyperlinks). You will NOT find the 3D models in the “Downloads” section from the nav. bar above.
You won’t find pretty jet exterior models here. I only do the interior parts for the purpose of building them.
WHY?
You see, the problem I have is that I can’t find authentic dimensions of this stuff. Sure, the sim community is very willing to give you dimensions if you ask. But nobody seems to be willing to give all of them. Either the ones with authentic parts are too busy, has no drafting / 3D modeling skills, or for whatever reasons I don’t even want to mention. Maybe because they are afraid that by providing all the accurate measurements, it will decrease the market demand for authentic parts thus reducing the value of their parts. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just want the authentic measurements.
Even when somebody went to the length of providing what I called marked up photo and give a lot of detailed measurements, they often leave a lot to be desired. For instance, take the look at the following example. I re-created it from my 3D model after I accurately re-created my TQS 3D model, and needed to BS the cutoff lever because I don’t have the cutoff lever. I got the rendering from my throttle 3D model, and marked it up with red dimension markings, just like what the original had but instead it was of photo, not a rendering. I did this re-creation so that I can’t be sued for copyright infringement, in case the original author is pissed off at my legitimate criticism.
Look at the above marked up “photo.” Yes, I am very grateful for the original author spending the time to measure these, marked them up and shared them. But, from the point of view of somebody like me who wants to re-create the cutoff lever, those dimensions are mostly useless. Yes, a couple of them are kind of useful, for instance, total length is “about” 2.5”, and the hook height of 14.1mm gave me a “rough idea” of what the radius is, and the barrel of the hinge of the pin is about 3/8” wide. Other than these, it gave me absolutely no information in the Z-direction. And a lot of those measurements are just a bit misleading and should be carefully scrutinized and discarded. And believe it or not, this is actually the “norm” in the pit building community. Who in the hell started all this “methodology”??? I guarantee you that it’s a hell lot older than the pit building history.
Again, let me stress that I appreciate the willingness and good will of people who do this kind of contribution; it’s hell better than nothing. The trouble I have is that this kind of information at this level is just not enough to re-create anything within tolerable accuracy. It’s all very “bush league.” And I do understand that most pit builders are not trained at drafting, so they do not understand what kinds of information need to be provided. Just because you have read many technical drawings does not mean you know what kinds of info you need to provide. Trust me on this one, I could read architectural blue prints since I was a kid as I grew up in my dad’s job sites, but I still got a lot of red inks for missing information in technical drafting class in college. For instance, there is a very good reason why the front, side, and top views are the standard 3 views provided for any technical drawings, and if need be, more views should be provided. The 3 standard views make sure you are presented with all the blanks to fill in from X, Y, and Z directions. Our examples above missed completely the other tow views, not to mention even in the front view a lot of critical information are missed (I’d say, at least 1/2 was missing). The whole point of technical drawings is to provide enough information for others to re-create what you have in your head. So, this one, for example, provides some tidbits of juicy and useful information, although questionable and incomplete. And another one provides some other small bits of information. Just recreating a simple cutoff lever takes a whole day of searching the Internet to find enough tidbits of information to get a very questionable recreation. It’s a very very inefficient and error prone. There is the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way. This is just the shitty way. I mean, if I had the genuine article in my hands, I could have done the complete 3D model is less than 20 minutes, including measuring and mow the front lawn.
For a simple cutoff lever took a day of searching to get a questionable BS recreation. What about stuff that are way more complicated? Well, I tried that with the right center console... a week of spare time search... nothing complete, and even worse, a lot of dimensions from different sources conflicted with each other. That’s why you don’t see the right center console for model C from me, even though I have the left center console, which is “almost” a mirror of the right console, but with some critical differences -- I know that the lower right corner is longer than the mirrored side side. But I do not know how much longer and what is the radius of the arc connecting to it. I can guess, but I’d hate to give you what I guess and it doesn’t fit for you. Man, you can guess it yourself. I just don’t want to “contaminate” my 3D models with dimensions you cannot trust.
Why wanting authentic measurements? Well, you can go with the “Community Plans” that are already doctored, so you don’t know which parts they pulled out of their ass and which part you can be apply liberal “artistic creativity.” NOBODY cites where the F*** they got their data from!!!
When I build stuff, I prefer to get the measurement as close to the authentic, if I am building a replica. However, I will also apply liberal “artistic license” on the parts of measurements that I care. Also, just because I get the authentic measurements does not mean I will be capable of producing parts that are exactly as prescribed! After all, I am an amateur hobbyist, not your professional machinist. I am very happy if I can get my parts within 5mil tolerance, where it matters. Meaning, I lose some of the accuracy during manufacturing. Now, if I don’t know which parts of the measurement came from somebody’s ass, how do I know which parts are safe to modify and which parts not?
Guess what? The more accurate your data is, the better chance you have for things you make to fit together. If you don’t have accurate enough data, you got no chance of things fitting together! Of course, you can always file, sand, or even saw parts to fit. But if given a choice of accurate data and less of those “fitting”, which one would you choose? The trouble with the state of pit building was -- there is no choice.
So, the aim is that I will slowly build up a library of accurately measured parts and construct the 3D models, and cite where the data comes from. Then, you and I can modify them to suit our builds. You want to build a Landing Gear Panel out of plywood? Be my guest, go grab the 3D model, create a drawing sheet out of it, and output that thing to a printer and then hand cut it with a jig saw. You want to build a backlighted one? Sure, go grab the model and create an outline of it, output it to your printer with vector print, then send it to your CO2 laser cutter to cut it out. You want to CNC mill it? Sure, output the 3D model to MasterCAM, and CNC mill it to your heart’s content! Hey, mine is from an older F16 block, and you are building a new block. Dude, change the 3D model to fit! Most likely the outline is the same, but the instruments mounted on the panel are different. For instance, block 15’s left aux console has an IFF panel on it, and block 40 has a smaller AIFF panel and a blank filler below it. Change it yourself! But, now, you know the left aux consoles of the two blocks are the same, just the IFF gets swapped out with an AIFF & a filler; you know which parts of the dimensions you can trust and you decide to what degree you are willing to trust, and which parts you cannot trust. That’s the idea of providing these authentic measurements!
Don’t ever think for a second that it never crossed my mind to charge for these 3D models. After all, I did spend a lot of cold hard cash on purchasing the authentic parts, and I spend countless hours and efforts into measuring and constructing these 3D models. But, that would be making a business out of it. I do this for the fun of it, i.e. it’s a hobby. 1. Making a business out of it violates my first rule about a hobby -- I do it for the fun of it. Business and hobby often have conflicting requirements. For a business, you don’t want to reveal all your secrets so others can take your secrets and beat you at it. Yet, for fun, you share! They conflict with each other!!! 2. If I were to charge for the models, and there are people charging hundreds per copy for their aircraft models, what if I charge, say USD $5 for the Left Aux Console? I am sure there are some who would cough up and pay for it. But, then I am in the information control business. What if somebody does not honor the agreement and host a web site for free download of it, say in China. How do I enforce that? Sue him? Tough luck! What if it’s in Iran? Or worse, in ISIS territory (not likely, but... you get the point)? It only takes one guy/gal to do so and my information control business crumbles down. That is, it’s not a viable business model for me. I’d rather not be in the information control business! 3. I already have a full time job. I don’t need this additional thing that makes peanuts, compared to my full time job, to ruin my fun! 4. Most importantly, building this 3D library, albeit slowly, could potentially change the way sim community do things and help other fellow simmers on their way of building their pits. It’s for the fun of it, you I can afford it, don’t let the money ruin the fun! For fun, you spend money! For jobs, you earn money! I prefer not to confuse them.
The dimensions of some of these models are measured from the “real thing.” For instance, I do own an F15E MFD bezel (brand new from USAF surplus). I, then, measure it meticulously and recreate it in SolidWorks, see the picture above. I use the word “meticulously” in a specific meaning. I try to measure them as accurately as I can, down to .01mm with a caliper etc. But, 0.01mm is not really attainable with human hands. If the ribs has 12.25 degree tapper, I would model the 12.25 degree tapper (you model as much as you can but not necessary the manufacturing of it will come out with all the details, so you must model more and prepare to lose some during the process). You can rely on them within 0.1mm tolerance. Sometimes, I do change the dimension a little bit to fit, but I try to be as faithful to the original as possible and model as much detail as I can and care. That is, if I have the original. However, I do not model EVERYTHING, but only the features/details that I care. For instance, for the F15 MFD bezel. I do model the back side recess, because I need to fit some electronics in there. But I do not model the backlight holes nor the attachment screw holes. Why not? Well, your lighting scheme will be different from mine so that you might have different “preferred” locations than mine. And I don’t have an F15 pit nor an MFD unit to mount this thing on yet. So I don’t know where and how I am going to attach this thing yet. Markings and letterings are not in the 3D model either. Because, I might decide to CNC mill thing this out of Acrylic and then laser engrave the lettering and markings. If this is the case, I don’t want the lettering and markings on the 3D model. If I decide to use SLA 3D printing to make this thing, then I do want the markings and lettering on the 3D model. Anyway, if you want them on yours, then add them yourself! I do provide SolidWorks files so you can modify them to your heart’s content.
I will list where the dimensions come from, for instance, the original, model number, serial #, if available. If I pull them out of my ass, I will let you know too. In other words, I will provide you the “references”, as in academia. So you can trace down the information and judge what information is reliable, what is not.
I will add them one at a time slowly.
Models here are published with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. In short, it means, it’s only for non-commercial uses. And if you use the work here, you should attribute the work. It does not mean that you must put a tag on your pit saying that I contributed to your pit. It just means that if you are going to go brag around on the Net or anywhere else, or publish it, you may NOT say you did model these yourself or stay mum about it for people to “assume” you did the work. On the contrary, you also should “attribute” me for the work I have done if you publish derivative works. It’s just fair. In other words, you may not “steal” my work and say you did it. That’s all I am asking for. Other than that, for non-commercial uses, do whatever else you wish with it.
For commercial uses, my principle is very simple. You make some money off my work, I want a cut. However small that is. But I usually prefer to stay out of the “money business.” I usually ask people to donate to other flight sim sites, like ViperPits, the amount they feel appropriate in order to obtain a commercial license from me.
Now comes to the touchy part of this “Openness” -- derivative works. What constitutes derivative works, and what does not? It’s a touchy subject people have different ideas and should normally be left for the lawyers. But here, I will give you my take on it. If you are just taking some dimensions from my work to construct yours, that’s definitively fair use. The trouble is what amount is fair use. If more than 50% of your dimensions come from mine, than you should definitively attribute me. But, it costs you nothing to attribute me anyway, not in monetary sense, nor reputation wise. It does not damage your reputation; in fact if increases your reputation as a responsible personal sharing credits when it’s due (even if it’s not really “due” it hurts you not, and perception of a standup person stands.). Now, if you just go monkey-see-monkey-do and “copy” the Solidworks steps in my files to recreate yours, partial or not, it definitively constitute derivative works. One of the worst is just blatantly copy my file, and start modifying it and then claim to be yours. Yes, it’s your work, but it’s a derivative work. With Creative Commons, for derivative works, you do not even have publish them in the same license I published. If you are publishing yours as non-commercial license, you don’t even have to publish it under Creative Common, but you do still have to attribute me for my contribution. If you are going to do derivative work and publish them for commercial purposes... I do not really know the answer. Consult your lawyers.
Note that, for some of the models, I do provide STL files. However, I cannot guarantee the the model will print out right for your particular 3D printer. For instance, for knob1.stl, when I printed with an FDM printer, the basic shape came out alright, rough but nothing some Bondo wouldn’t fix. No marking is possible with FDM printers. When I printed it with an SLA 3D printer.... it came out beautifully including the recessed arrow marking! A bit of sanding and bead blasting makes it a beauty. I only provide these STL file for your convenience in case you don’t have SolidWorks 2009 and later. But I have stopped that practice.
If you do open the SolidWorks files and try to export STL files, make sure you use mm and ASCII output format. Do not use inches or binary format. Otherwise, some OpenSource software can’t handle the file format SolidWorks generates this way.
Also, please note that, there are features in the SolidWorks models you can turn on/off to fit your manufacturing process. For instance, I usually use 3D fillets to round the corners at the end of the Solidworks files so it’s possible to turn them off without screwing up other geometries. If I am using CNC milling to make them, I could simple go in the file and drag the rollback bar up to exclude the fillet operations. If I were to use SLA 3D printing for a part, I would turn on the fillets so that it prints out with those beautiful rounded corners already. Of course, you could open the model and modify it further to fit your particular manufacturing method and material.
Without further ado, here we go.
Buttons, Knobs, and Lights
F15 Models
A10 Models
F16 Models
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• F16 MFD
Flight Sim 3D Models