PrintBoards is based on Telescope a social news app and allows users to upload, view, comment, and browse printable 3D models in a manner similar to Reddit. PrintBoards receives its core social functionality from the Telescope packages and then uses other community packages to integrate with Amazon S3 Storage and utilize ThreeJS to display each model.
ThreeJS
Working with ThreeJS is always a real treat, however it is never without its quirks. In this case, because I was developing on Meteor and using Blaze view layer I ran into some very interesting issues where the CPU would slowly get bogged down due to some resources not being cleaned up correctly.
Mobile
The developers of Telescope did an amazing job creating a core which was, by default, mobile friendly.
User Accounts
Another advantage of developing on a platform with a active community is you often don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Atmosphere was an amazing resource when it comes with integrating with other social networks to use O-Auth.
Uploads
PrintBoards employs a “slingshot” approach by transmitting the item’s metadata to a MongoDB database for storage, while simultaneously uploading the actual file to an S3 bucket.
Basic Upload
Uploader takes the the file and applies the meta information to the post behind the scenes.
Large File Upload
The Slingshot package allows for a variety of customizations and limitations including size.
Error Handling
Whoops looks like that file was over the 5mb limit!
Other Media
Slingshot can be used for essentially any kind of media or file and is limited only by the MIME types you designate.
