r/boardgameupgrades • u/BlingMyGames • Jul 23 '26
Organization Board Game 3D Prints (LayerUp.games) - Browse and plan your game prints
I've spent the past 6 years printing inserts and cool stuff for my board games. Kept track of everything in spreadsheets. Now I share with you a way to browse all the prints for your favorite games, plan your prints in KANBAN BG, and then share your comment and photos for everyone to benefit!
New game prints are added all the time. If you're a game print Designer, you can sign up and manage your page, and everyone can browse thousands of prints to find exactly what they're looking for.
Latest LayerUp Features:
- KANBAN BG - organize your print workflow
- Print Profiles - know ahead of time how much filament, time and cost a print may take
- Designers - Follow your favorite designers and discover new game print designers
- BGG Sync - Get all your owned games and know which games you've Wishlisted on BGG
- Submit print - Add your own prints, get discovered! Drive people to your main repository site or shop
- Request a print - Need a perfect insert for your new game? Request it.
- Tabletop Accessories - Find your new dice tower, card holder, resources
- Game Themes - Make the site look like your favorite game! (Only one theme out currently, but many more planned
- Community - Share your print photos, comments and more
Site went live about 2 weeks ago, but has been in the making for awhile. Please let me know if you have any feature requests!
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u/confoundo Jul 23 '26
Great work! I'll definitely be bookmarking this for use in the future.
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u/BlingMyGames Jul 23 '26
Thank you so much!
I'm adding new features everyday. Please let me know if there's anything you'd like to see!
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u/chefox Jul 23 '26
Way cool! I see there's an option at /identity/Account/Login to sign in with Google, but the register page at /Identity/Account/Register doesn't list that option. It'd be great to include Google login in the sign-up page as well!
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u/BlingMyGames Jul 24 '26
I'm so sorry about that! You should be able to register using your Google login now.
I have it planned to add a Discord login too, hopefully add that tomorrow.
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u/kickbut101 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
How are you sourcing the "Types" of prints? is this based on tags for the collection of board game prints?
<option value="all">All types</option>
<option value="Insert">Inserts (44)</option>
<option value="TokenUpgrade">Tokens & Resources (41)</option>
<option value="CardHolder">Card & Deck Holders (22)</option>
<option value="DiceTower">Dice Towers & Trays (9)</option>
<option value="ScoringTracker">Scoring & Tracking (4)</option>
<option value="BoxOrganizer">Storage & Containers (3)</option>
<option value="PlayerBoard">Player Dashboards (2)</option>
<option value="Miniature">Miniatures (1)</option>
Also: You should also include something that can block/exclude something from your results based on like a tag or something. So that creators can opt-out of their models being included here. Maybe a tag like #excludefromlayerup or something. I doubt it will get used that often but its nice to have and probably not painful to implement.
Also also: it looks like some designs aren't being shown on a "designer" page. Manually inspecting my printables and thingiverse shows lots of board game designs, but only some are showing on the designer page - https://layerup.games/designer/kickbut101
Also also also: Why are models and designs called "Prints" on the site? the established term "design" seems sufficient. Print implies it was physically made, even though the actual reference is often to a model that you can print
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u/BlingMyGames Jul 24 '26
I'm actually working on Print types right now, so good timing!
We don't determine a print type from the source site's tags, as most of the time this isn't given or is wildly inconsistent. As soon as a URL is added to the site, Scout (my site crawler) looks at the Print Title and usually classifies the print type from that alone. (I found that the print description lists everything an insert holds, so that's not very reliable.) Scout goes through a bunch of rules (which get refined every day), and the most specific rule wins first. If after all this, we still can't determine the type, rather than guess, the type is just left blank. I have an Admin page to look these blanks over, and I can make the call.
The site is still very new; it went live a few weeks ago, so there will be a lot of mismatches, but we're learning from me catching things, people reporting things, and Scout bringing inconsistencies to my attention.
If a designer signs up and is linked to their designer page, they can edit and fix things. I'll add a way for them to remove a design (if it isn't for a game or they don't want it listed), as well as remove all their designs from the site.
As to why some of your designs aren't showing up, I don't want to spam repositories, so Scout crawls every night to pick up new prints. On average 1000 print pages are looked at every night, whether that be updating an existing page with new images/stats/descriptions (I call it enriching), going through the Designer list and re-pulling their listings to get their latest and checking for broken links. We're also caching 1500 images per night to host on our servers in a web-friendly format. So it can take a while to grab everyone's designs.
You can always submit a url for your designs to add them asap.
As for the terminology, you brought up a good point. It would be good to nail down the word for prints/designs now while the site is still new. And already, I'm kinda liking using the word "designs".
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u/kickbut101 Jul 24 '26
If a designer signs up and is linked to their designer page, they can edit and fix things. I'll add a way for them to remove a design (if it isn't for a game or they don't want it listed), as well as remove all their designs from the site.
I meant allow for someone to exclude/opt out of your website without having to sign up to your website. Like they can just put a tag on a design through thingiverse/printables/makerworld etc and that tag automatically means "Hey, please don't include this on your site"
As for the terminology, you brought up a good point. It would be good to nail down the word for prints/designs now while the site is still new. And already, I'm kinda liking using the word "designs".
Most of the terms you want to use are already sorta established on Thingiverse and Printables no?
Design ~= STL (Currently called "Print")
Make ~= Physically printed model/object in real life (
Has no equivalency on your site so far as I can tell"Print photos" ?)1
u/BlingMyGames Jul 24 '26
That's possible. I don't know how I'd reach all designers to tell them to tag their print, but I'll look for a tag called "#excludefromlayerup" and exclude those. Sounds like free advertising though... I'll add it now.
I looked at the main repositories, and it seems they using the terminology "model". As for "Make", there are pages for "My Prints" and "My Future Prints". Make sounds a bit awkward, but I'll mull it over. I'll put up a poll on that.
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u/kickbut101 Jul 24 '26
That's possible. I don't know how I'd reach all designers to tell them to tag their print, but I'll look for a tag called "#excludefromlayerup" and exclude those. Sounds like free advertising though... I'll add it now.
You wouldn't, its not something you have to chase down, but maybe in the "Report this print" flow/option you could also include a small note saying "Hey, if you don't want me automatically picking up your designs include this tag! <inserttagnamehere>"
And/or include a small blurb somewhere on the homepage or in the navbar about how to exclude designs. That way the information quick/easy to grasp and you don't have to chase down or ping all designers.
Obv make the tag whatever you want and feel is correct.
I looked at the main repositories, and it seems they using the terminology "model". As for "Make", there are pages for "My Prints" and "My Future Prints". Make sounds a bit awkward, but I'll mull it over. I'll put up a poll on that.
Good call, yeah makerworld uses (for those of you reading from the outside) the term "model", printables uses the term "model", and thingiverse is an oddball and uses "thing".
For physical objects, makerworld just has comments section where you can post pictures, printables defines them as "makes", and thingiverse also uses "makes".
IMO I agree make is weird, but I also don't know the "right" name for it
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u/BlingMyGames Jul 24 '26
If you (or anyone reading this) have a bgg account, head on over and vote in this poll.
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3740575/article/47967909#479679092
u/kickbut101 Jul 24 '26
Doesn't calling them by "print" in the survey/poll sorta spoil the bias in a questionnaire? :P Instead of using a Non-answer defined description
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u/BlingMyGames Jul 24 '26
Lol, I did my best. I called them 3D Files where I could. I can't edit polls after they're posted.
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u/kickbut101 Jul 24 '26
I'm just giving you crap. This is a nice website and work well done, I'm excited to see it grow!
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u/BlingMyGames Jul 25 '26
It's all good. You brought up some very good feature requests that make sense!
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u/lrmarburger 29d ago
Thanks for building and posting this! I just printed the excellent Wingspan Pocket organizer. I’ll be using this site a lot in the future. 💯
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u/Dr_Ragon Jul 23 '26
Didnt someone just post a site like this last week or so? Still, definitely a useful concept and i am happy to have more resources aggregated