DEFCAD, Inc. is an American startup that has created a

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

and

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...

for designers and hobbyists to find and develop 3D printable and other

CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...

models online.

History

Founding

When

Makerbot Industries MakerBot Industries, LLC is an American desktop 3D printer manufacturer company headquartered in New York City. It was founded in January 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach "Hoeken" Smith to build on the early progress of the RepRap Proje ...

removed firearms-related 3D Printable files at the public repository

Thingiverse Thingiverse is a website dedicated to the sharing of user-created digital design files. Providing primarily free, open-source hardware designs licensed under the GNU General Public License or Creative Commons licenses, the site allows contributor ...

in December 2012, open source software entrepreneurs launched DEFCAD as a companion site to publicly host the removed files. Public and community submissions to DEFCAD rose quickly, and in March 2013, at the

SXSW South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Te ...

Interactive festival, DEFCAD was announced as a repurposed and expanded site that would serve as a 3D search engine and development hub. DEFCAD has been called "The Pirate Bay of 3D Printing" and "the anti-Makerbot".

Community

DEFCAD began as a repository where users could upload and download CAD models, but quickly became a community with the addition of an

IRC Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called ''channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat and ...

channel and public forums. The site has had over 2,500 community users and offered access to over 100,000 models in its history.

Search

In August 2013, DEFCAD released the public alpha of its 3D search engine, which indexes public object repositories and allows users to add their own objects. The site soon closed down due to pressure from the United States State Department, under the pretense that distributing certain files online might violate US Arms Export

ITAR International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a United States regulatory regime to restrict and control the export of defense and military related technologies to safeguard U.S. national security and further U.S. foreign policy objective ...

regulations. From 2013 to 2018, DEFCAD remained offline, pending resolution to the legal case

Defense Distributed Defense Distributed is an online open-source hardware organization that develops digital schematics of firearms in CAD files, or "wiki weapons", that may be downloaded from the Internet and used in 3D printing or CNC milling applications. Among ...

brought against the State Department, namely that ITAR regulations placed a prior restraint on Defense Distributed's free speech, particularly since the speech in question regarded another constitutionally protected right: firearms. While the legal argument failed to gain support in federal court, in a surprise reversal in 2018, the State Department agreed that ITAR did in fact violate Defense Distributed's free speech. Therefore, for a brief period in late 2018 DEFCAD was once again publicly available online. Shortly thereafter, 20 states and Washington DC sued the State Department, in order to prevent DEFCAD from remaining online. At its core, this new suit cited a procedural error: the proper notice had not been given prior to enacting the change in how ITAR applied to small arms. As such, DEFCAD was once again taken offline, pending the State Department providing proper notice via the Federal Register. In March 2020, the ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' reported that DEFCAD had once again became publicly available online. The site had implemented a new model in which people who wished to download firearms blueprints would be charged $50 and vetted to ensure they were located within the United States and that they were citizens or legal residents.

References

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External links