Inspiration and Credits
Cosmos was built from the ground up in order to build as much flexibility as possible into a keyboard generator. Nevertheless, it takes the best ideas from many of the open-source generators that came before it:
The Dactyl Keyboard: Matt Adereth’s generator kicked off keyboard generators for contoured ergonomic keyboards and inspired Cosmos’s Stilts case.
The Dactyl Manuform Keyboard: Tom Short’s generator simplifies the 3D printing of the keyboard by extruding walls straight down. Cosmos uses the same technique.
Carbonfet’s Manuform Fork: Modifies the Dactyl Manuform to have a thumb cluster more similar to the original Dactyl. This thumb cluster is one of the presets in Cosmos.
Joshua Shreve’s Manuform Fork: The first Manuform generator to produce STEP files, thanks to a rewrite of the codebase, and the basis for Cosmos’s Orbyl preset.
The Compactyl Keyboard: Derek Nheiley’s keyboard adds lots of tenting and a gel pad holder to the Manuform, plus 3d-printable hotswap holders used by Cosmos.
The Dometyl Keyboard: Geoff deRosenroll’s keyboard is better explained by its author. Its tenting design inspired Cosmos’s Tilted case design.
I also owe my gratitude to the many contributors to the Cosmos generator:
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I would not have imagined testing so many keyboards or spending so much time on this project, were it not for the wonderful individuals who have sponsored the project. If that’s you, thanks!
Additionally:
- The backwards-compatible parts are generated from Ibnu Daru Aji’s web generator, which is the basis for my original Dactyl web generator.
- Cosmos would not be able to generate accurate previews without high-quality keycap renders. Most of these are generated using the KeyV2 library, and DES keycaps are generated from the inventor’s own generator.
- The only reason it’s possible to generate CAD designs in the browser is because the wonderful OpenCascade CAD kernel is open-source, and Sebastian Alff maintains a port of OpenCascade to WebAssembly. I’m also indebted to Steve Genoud’s work on replicad, which greatly simplifies the kernel’s API.
- The Cherry MX switch model is based on gcb’s design and the Kaih Choc switch from Stephan Park’s design. Additonally, parts from Adafruit and Seeed Studio are imported from their open-source models.