A tremendous number of 3D models exist in online libraries such as Thingi10K, Google Scanned Objects, Princeton Shape Benchmark, the Smithsonian, and many more. The limitation is that these libraries contain designs in a variety of formats, and typically lack adequate attributes or descriptions, so searches aren't comprehensive.
3DShapeIndex.com solves these issues by being able to encode a very wide range of 3D formats (STL, IGES, PRT, ASM, STP, OBJ, etc.), and by enabling search by shape so that one object can be used to find all others like it. Users can even upload designs to use as personal search targets. The 3DShapeIndex.com website has been initially populated with content found by iSEEK Corporation's web crawler, CADSEEK Phoenix. When 3D content is found, a geometric fingerprint and thumbnail image is produced, and sent to 3DShapeIndex.com. This means that 3DSI does not host the 3D data, but instead hosts only the CADSEEK fingerprints that make the content searchable.
The Google Scanned Objects library demonstrates how a consumer catalog could be displayed and make Find More Like This searches not require human based tagging and sorting.
The Smithsonian library demonstrates CADSEEK's ability to encode non-engineering models.
The National Institutes of Health's Protein Data Bank includes thousands of 3D protein models where CADSEEK has been used to determine similarity.
Learn about the project here.
