Tinkerex

Every file your workshop makes, previewed.

Tinkerex indexes the folder your STL, STEP, LightBurn, DXF and Gerber files already live in, draws a preview of each (more than a hundred file types), and opens them in the browser, measured in millimetres. It runs on your own box, and your files stay plain files.

Install it yourself

No sign-up. A shared account that resets every night.

  • A LightBurn file: the hex tiles for every resource, each engraved with its own pattern
  • A LightBurn file: the number tokens, 2 to 12, with their probability dots
  • A LightBurn file: three award cards, Longest Road, Largest Army and Longest Turn
  • A LightBurn file: the harbor tokens, 3:1 and 2:1, and the resource symbols
  • A LightBurn file: two building-cost reference cards and three harbor tokens
  • A LightBurn file: the game box's finger-jointed panels, the lid engraved with the name
  • An SVG file: the whole set in one drawing, the board of numbered hex tiles ringed by harbors, the cards below
  • An SVG file: a hexagonal tray with slots for the cards and wells for the tokens
  • A DXF file: a hexagonal jig that holds pieces while they are engraved
  • A MillMage file: a hexagonal frame and its pieces, for the CNC
  • A 3MF file: the robber, ready to slice
  • An STL file: a robber figure as a print mesh
Twelve files from one maker's laser-cut board-game set, as Tinkerex previews them. The demo holds the whole project.

How it works

  1. Point it at a folder

    A NAS share, an S3 bucket or a sync server. Nothing is imported or copied.

  2. It keeps up on its own

    Save from LightBurn, a slicer or KiCad, and the file appears within minutes.

  3. Open anything, anywhere

    Spin a model, measure a cut file, read a README, from any browser.

A 3D viewer that speaks millimetres

STL, 3MF, STEP and a dozen more open in the browser with their size on three axes.

The 3D viewer: the board game's robber turned in the browser, 25.9 × 24 × 37.6 mm beneath it

Cut files, measured

LightBurn, SVG and DXF files show their real size, and print at 1:1 to check against stock.

The Measure view: the hex tiles' LightBurn file, 1,475 shapes to click and measure, beside its laser settings

A folder becomes a project

Make a folder under Projects and it gets a page: its README, its files by kind, its git repository.

A project page: the board-game set's cover, its file count and its recently changed files

Generate the next file

Tools like the box generator save straight into your library, next to everything else.

The box generator: a box's size and material settings beside a live preview of its cut sheet

Yours, on your box

  • Your box

    Docker on Unraid, Linux, a Mac or Windows.

  • Plain files

    Uninstall it and your folder is unchanged.

  • No database to run

    SQLite out of the box.

  • Apache-2.0

    Open source, every line.

See it with real files

The demo is the same app, holding that whole project.

Install guide Make a compose file