Concepts
What Rack Maker's words mean - racks, mounts, devices, projects, revisions, namespaces, access, and licences.
Racks
The frame everything goes in: an open-frame 10″ or 19″ rack, a DeskPi RackMate, or wire shelving. Its rails, or its shelves, give the places things can go, counted in U (rack units). The RackMate T0 counts in half-U.
A rack is a catalog entry like any other part, so new kinds of rack can be added to the catalog without changes to the app.
Mounts
What attaches to the rails: shelves, trays, cradles and brackets, bought or printed. Each takes a number of positions, and devices sit on them. Printed mounts come with STL files, listed under Printed parts. See Exports and printing.
Devices
What you rack: mini PCs, switches, routers, power. Each has a size, ports and a weight. If yours is missing, model it in the device modeler.
Projects
One rack and what is in it. A project has a random 21-character id, and its link is all it takes to open and edit it, from any device, with or without an account. Share it the way you would share a password.
Signed in, you can Claim a project that nobody owns yet, to list it under your account, and then hand out a Read-only link instead. Projects you create are yours from the start. See Sharing.
Revisions
Two things in Rack Maker keep revisions.
Projects. Every change is saved as you work. Saves from one browser within a few minutes fold into one revision. History, in the editor's right sidebar, lists them, and restoring one adds it as a new revision, so nothing is lost.
Catalog entries are numbered revisions. A published revision never changes: an edit makes a new revision. A project keeps using the revisions it was built with. When a newer one is published, the project offers the upgrade under Updates available, with a preview of what changes. See Entries and revisions.
Namespaces
Catalog ids look like alice/mini-pc-tray. The first part is the namespace: your handle, for what you make. Only you can change what is in yours. Anyone signed in can copy an entry into their own namespace with Fork, and the copy records which entry it came from. See Namespaces.
Access
| Who | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Anyone | Browse the catalog, open and edit a project by its link, open a read-only link, try the device modeler in their browser. |
| Signed in | Also create, copy, import and claim projects, draft parts and devices, use their drafts in their own projects, submit them for review, fork entries and report them. |
| Contributors | Also publish to the catalog, upload model files and add listings. Ask for this on the Catalog page; an admin reviews each request. |
See Accounts and sign-in and Contributing.
Licences and credits
Catalog data is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 and credited to whoever made it. Model files keep their own licence. Credits lists them all, with the credit to copy when you share a build. See Licences and credits.