Aquarium

Aquarium is Zoo's public CAD gallery for discovering, viewing, and sharing models. Use it when you want a model to have a public destination outside Zoo Design Studio. Projects are submitted from Zoo Design Studio and become public after Aquarium review.

Aquarium is not a project library. Personal Cloud stores the private, editable project; Aquarium shows an approved public version only after you choose to publish it.

Public Model Page

An Aquarium model page gives the model a public destination that can be opened in a browser. Use it for examples, demos, tutorials, and models you want other people to inspect.

Publish a Project

Before publishing, make sure you are signed in, have a username set on your Zoo account, and have a non-empty KCL file without errors open in the project. The Publish button is disabled when the current KCL file is empty or has errors.

Publishing requires the project to be stored in Personal Cloud. If you publish a project from a Directory library on desktop, the submission dialog warns that a successful submission will move the project folder into the managed Personal Cloud folder. Zoo Design Studio closes the project, moves it rather than leaving a second copy behind, then reopens it from Personal Cloud and starts cloud sync. Projects already in Personal Cloud do not move. In the browser, projects are already cloud-backed.

To submit a project:

1. Open the project in Zoo Design Studio.
2. Select Publish in the Top Bar.
3. Enter a title and description.
4. Select at least one Aquarium category.
5. Review the Aquarium terms, then select Submit for review.

The Aquarium title is currently also used as the project title in Personal Cloud. Changing the Aquarium title can therefore rename the project and its desktop working-copy folder.

Zoo Design Studio uploads eligible project files from the entire folder tree rather than only the KCL file currently open. Publishing uses the same file-selection rules as Cloud Sync: .gitignore files are included, while ignored files, version-control metadata directories, Zoo's internal ._meta data, and the generated project thumbnail are excluded. See Which Files Sync? for details.

The app confirms whether the project was published or submitted for review.

If the project has already been submitted, the dialog restores its publication details and shows the last submission date. Edit the details and select Update submission to send a new version. When reviewers request changes, Zoo Design Studio shows their feedback when you open the project; update the project and submit it again to return it to the review queue.

Submitted Version and Status

An Aquarium submission captures the current version of the project at the time you submit it. Edits and Cloud Sync updates to the Personal Cloud project do not automatically change the version submitted to Aquarium. Open the Publish dialog and select Update submission when you want to submit the current project version for review.

Zoo Design Studio can show these publication statuses:

Updating a submission returns it to Pending Review. Wait for Published before sharing it as a public Aquarium model.

Keep or Remove a Publication

The cloud project powers its Aquarium entry. Moving a published project from Personal Cloud to a Directory library makes the project local-only by deleting the cloud project, which also deletes the public Aquarium entry. Deleting the project from Personal Cloud has the same effect.

Keep the editable project in Personal Cloud while you want its Aquarium publication to remain available.

Model Files

Keep the model files organized before publishing. Clear names, stable KCL files, and meaningful parameters make the shared model easier to understand and reuse.

If a Directory project uses Git or another version-control system, commit and push or back up the repository before publishing. The repository folder moves into managed Personal Cloud storage, but version-control metadata is not uploaded. Cloud operations that replace the managed working copy can remove excluded local content such as .git and ignored files. Consider keeping another clone or backup outside the Personal Cloud folder.

Sharing

Share the Aquarium URL when you want someone to view the model without sending a project folder directly. Direct project share-link creation is not currently supported in Zoo Design Studio. Use Publish to submit a project to Aquarium, then share its public Aquarium URL after it is approved.

Terms

Models published to Aquarium are governed by the Aquarium terms. Review them before publishing models that include proprietary or customer-sensitive geometry.

Are you interested in code?

Aquarium publishes model content, but it does not require a special KCL function. KCL files remain normal source files inside the model project.

Visit the Aquarium CAD Gallery to browse public models.