Getting to know the #NewKnowable (Part two)
This is the second post in a series where I’ll dive into all the new features, design decisions and thoughts behind #NewKnowable. This time we’ll discuss how components allow you to manage your project better. If you want to start with the first post of the series click here.
Let’s imagine you are building a robot. Most certainly it will have a basic control system, some kind of motor and most probably a casing. If you look at these - very simplified - parts, you’ll notice that they are all very different form one another: The control system may be Arduino based and you need to write code for it to work properly. The motor requires some mechanical skills and understanding. And you might want to print the casing with your FabLab’s 3D printer.
All these task are vastly different – and it doesn’t make sense to discuss them with your co-makers all in the same place. That’s why we came up with the idea of components:
Components allow you to split your project into manageable pieces.
To stick with the robot example: You could create a component for the Arduino, one for the motor and one for the casing. Each component allows you to describe what you want to achieve, upload corresponding files and discuss all of that with other makers.
A list of components for one specific project
A detail view of one component
But components have another advantage: They allow for version control. Your project will change over time - but you probably don’t want to lose all your previous iterations along the way. knowbale makes it easy to save “snapshots” of your project at any time. This enables you to view the history of your project and download past iterations.
Components allow you to save and download old iterations
This is obviously just the first step for us. There are so many more things we plan to do with components in the future (think real interoperable modules and automatic version control) but I believe that even at this early stage components allow you to manage your projects better.













