What Are the Origins and License of Gridfinity?

Updated

Gridfinity was created by Zack Freedman and first released in his video "Gridfinity: Your Ultimate Modular Workshop is FREE!" as a framework for the community to extend, under the MIT license. The design was partly inspired by Alexandre Chappel's Assortment System, which is licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA. Today Gridfinity is maintained and continually adapted by a thriving community.

Origins

  • Creator: Zack Freedman.
  • First release: The video "Gridfinity: Your Ultimate Modular Workshop is FREE!" introduced the designs as a framework for the community to extend.
  • Prior inspiration: Alexandre Chappel's Assortment System, licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA, partly inspired Freedman's initial Gridfinity designs.

License

  • The Gridfinity designs were released under the MIT license.
  • The MIT license is what makes Gridfinity a framework others can freely build on, which is why so many community ports and generators exist.

What this means for reuse

Aspect Detail
Gridfinity core designs MIT license
Assortment System (inspiration) CC-BY-NC-SA
Practical effect You can extend, remix, and build on Gridfinity; the community has done so across many tools and libraries

Community and ecosystem

Gridfinity is now in the hands of a thriving community that continually adapts it to their needs. That community activity shows up in the ecosystem listed on gridfinity.xyz, including:

  • Online generators such as Perplexing Labs' Gridfinity Generator, gridfinitygenerator.com, GridfinityCreator, Extrabold.tools, tooltrace.ai, and the Gridfinity Layout Tool.
  • Developer libraries for building Gridfinity-compatible objects in code, including Build123d, CadQuery, and OpenSCAD ports.

The site sums up the design philosophy with the line: "The best things in life are integer multiples of 42x42x7mm." Gridfinity is described as a modular, open-source grid storage system that is free, open source, and almost 100% 3D printable — a candidate for a workshop's modular storage system to stay productive, organized, and safe.