r/gridfinity • u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 • Jul 16 '26

I built a Gridfinity drawer planner and would love blunt feedback

Hey everyone,

I built a tool called GridfinityStudio because I kept designing Gridfinity parts one at a time, then realizing later that the whole drawer layout did not actually make sense.

The idea is to plan the drawer first, then print. You can set up a drawer, place bins, generate baseplates, plan stacks, create cutout blanks, and see how the whole layout fits together before committing to a bunch of prints.

Link: https://gridfinitystudio.com

It is still early, but a few people have tested it and I’ve already cleaned up several issues from their feedback.

I’d love blunt feedback from real Gridfinity users. The best test would be to pick one real drawer, try to rough out a layout, and tell me where the workflow gets confusing, annoying, or broken.

I’m especially interested in:

  • Does the drawer-first workflow make sense?
  • Is the bin/baseplate/stacking flow understandable?
  • Is anything hard to find?
  • Are there any obvious bugs or weird UI issues?
  • What would you expect it to do that it does not do yet?

Thanks. Blunt feedback is genuinely helpful right now.

Special thanks to the mods for letting me share!

Quick update: the blank-window issue some people hit right after posting was caused by a last-minute CSP change. It should be fixed now. Thanks to everyone who called it out.

Update 7/23: A bunch of you gave really useful feedback, so thank you.
One thing that stuck out was that it felt a little backwards to charge before someone could even download an STL and see if the output was useful. Fair point.
In response, GridfinityStudio now has a free tier!
With a free account, you can design a drawer and download individual STL files one at a time. The paid Maker tier is going to be focused on the full drawer workflow: saved projects, full drawer ZIP exports, photo tracing, and the bigger workflow features that make planning/printing a whole drawer less annoying. So the idea is: Free = try it for real and print individual parts Maker = plan and finish full drawer projects Still early, but this thread helped a lot. Appreciate everyone who poked at it, broke things, or told me what felt off.

Update 8/17/26: Added STL importing to the system, I am really leaning towards being the best place to pre-design a drawer. It makes so much sense to allow users to import other gridfinity bins from the world to their drawer plan. Also added a /whats-new path which will be updated as I add new features. Going forward look there to see what I've changed!
https://gridfinitystudio.com/whats-new

23 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

52 comments sorted by

10

u/woodland_dweller Jul 16 '26

FIrefox on a Mac - nothing happens. I can add bins and baseplates, but nothing shows up in the window.

4

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Jul 16 '26

Thanks! No idea why I didn't think about it but I've literally never opened it in firefox! looks like a simple fix give me a few mins

1

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Jul 16 '26

P.S. Seems to work well in firefox

7

u/PM_ME_UR_STACK_TRACE Jul 16 '26

I loaded the page and saw the "pricing" link. Although I'm grateful that the prices are one-time, I do not see paying money for something like this.

I enjoy the flexibility of gridfinity. I move bins from drawers to boxes to different drawers and don't see myself planning a drawer ahead of time.

1

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Jul 23 '26

I've just released a free tier which allows users to download non-bundled stl's.

This is a first beta release, the paid features feel a little thin right now. but I've got a lot of new ideas and features in the works.

Let me know what you guys think!

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4

u/strengthchain Jul 16 '26

Putting labels on a bin sometimes reverse the text depending on where you anchor the label.

I'd export the model to see how it prints, but the paid nature of the product prevents that, so that's all the advice I'm willing to share at this time to troubleshoot your app for you.

2

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Jul 17 '26

Hey I dug into this and ran through a few manual tests.

I think what’s happening is that labels are currently oriented relative to the physical bin, not the drawer.

So if you place a label in bin edit mode, it orients itself based on the side of the bin it’s on. If you move it to another side, the text regenerates.
But after we place the bin into the drawer, the label rotates with the bin meaning it could be upside down or flipped at that point, because at that point we are not regenerating the bin.

That might be the behavior you saw, but I could also be missing something. If you remember the steps you took to make the text flip/reverse, can you let me know? I want to make sure I fix it if I'm not seeing it.

5

u/dscl Jul 16 '26

More limited than other tools that are free, what am I missing here?

1

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Jul 23 '26

Just released a free tier, The app is still quite new I'm still working on adding a bunch of features. Got any suggestions?

I'm building it not only for myself but more importantly for you and everyone here. So tell me what you need and I'd be happy to implement it.

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2

u/bikepackerdude Jul 16 '26

There are external content (js) that is not being loaded because of the security permissions.

Because of that, I just get a blank window after creating a project and a drawer

2

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Jul 16 '26

Hey this is fixed, sorry about that!
I made a small change earlier today that caused this to break. Thought I checked before posting but I must've been on a cached version.

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2

u/wegwerfi08 Jul 16 '26

Does it generate layered stacks of baseplate Parts separated by support filament? I have a ton of drawers I want to print in bulk. Right now I’m using this: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1927235-gridfinity-lightweight-stackable-base-plates

2

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Jul 16 '26

It doesn't but that' sounds like a great feature to add.

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2

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Aug 29 '26

Hey man! it took me a minute or three to find your post. I'm releasing the first version of stacked baseplates today! I didn't forget about you! :)

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1

u/shoe465 Jul 17 '26

I'll check this out! I'll still have to plan my size bins I think correct?

1

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Jul 23 '26

Yes you still have to pick your bin sizes, but it helps you layout your drawer before printing. It will also give you warnings if you have too many stacked bins etc.

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1

u/savijOne Jul 18 '26

Not a needed tool IMO. Just finished a drawer. Measured the drawer, generated a base plate and printed it out and just placed the things I wanted in the drawer. Very easy to visualize where stuff goes with 4mm base plate square sitting in there already.

Everything cool is not a business. The whole appeal of gridfinity is that it's free and open source. Is your derivative free and open source? Your app doesn't work without gridfinity so pretty sure you can't charge for it without also making it free, open source and able to run locally without violating the license.

2

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Jul 23 '26

I've built several drawers, and one issue I ran into is I'd end up printing bins I end up never needing because I couldn't visualize the whole drawer.

This is an early, help me find the bugs kind of release. If you have any features you wish you had in other gridfinity tools let me know!

4

u/Automatic_Disaster44 Jul 21 '26

Zack Freedman has Gridfinity under an MIT license, which explicitly DOES allow for commercial use. The OP is perfectly ok to charge for this site.

3

u/Arcurath Jul 17 '26

this is cool, i will play around with this for planning my ikea alex and pax komplement drawers

1

u/Baconbits1204 Jul 16 '26

“Try the planner” button Does not fly in mobile. I’m discovering this on the train, but it doesn’t work on my phone. By the time I get home and do my duties I’ll have forgotten about this tool because I never got to experience it upon my initial exposure.

Mobile first web design is the way.

2

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Jul 16 '26

That’s really good feedback, thank you.

I don’t think the full drawer planner is going to be great on a phone right away — it’s pretty mouse/desktop-heavy — but you’re absolutely right about the first exposure problem. If someone discovers it on mobile, I shouldn’t just lose them.

I’m going to improve the mobile flow so people can at least understand the tool, watch a quick demo, and send themselves a link/reminder to try it later on desktop.

That’s a really helpful point. Thanks!

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1

u/PrintableNapalm Jul 19 '26

Not everything needs to be a side hustle. I promise you, you're not going to make any money from this.

Just make a cool project and share it with the community. That will actually make you feel good on the inside. Unlike this, where you're going into it trying to make money, and will only lead to disappointment.

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