Glossary
Plain-language definitions of terms used across this site. You shouldn't need any of these to use OHM — they're here for when you meet one and want to check.
Design : A piece of open hardware someone has documented well enough that another person could build it. On this site, "design" always means the documentation and files, never a physical object.
Facility (also: workshop, space) : Somewhere things get made — a makerspace, a fab lab, a university workshop, a small manufacturer. In OHM a facility is a record describing what that place can produce and where it is.
Component : A distinct part or sub-assembly within a design, which can be tracked, replaced, or salvaged on its own. A stepper motor, a circuit board, a printed housing. A component can have a design of its own, which is how larger designs nest inside each other.
Matching : Working out which facilities can build a given design. Produces a ranked list with an explanation for each — what it satisfied, what it didn't, and why.
Supply tree : The plan that comes out of matching: how a design can actually be produced, across one facility or several, including which parts depend on which. When no single workshop can perform every process, the supply tree is what spans them.
Process : Something that has to be done to produce a design — 3D printing, laser cutting, machining, soldering, assembly. Designs require processes; facilities perform them. Matching is largely the business of lining those two up.
Package : A design plus all the files it points at, bundled into one self-contained archive. Useful when you need the whole thing in one piece — to hand to a workshop, to archive, or to work offline.
Federation : The arrangement whereby many independent OHM instances each hold their own records and choose which others to follow. There is no central instance. See federation and sovereignty.
Instance (also: node) : One running copy of OHM, holding its own records. The one at openhardwaremanager.org is an instance; so is one you run yourself.
Peer : Another instance that yours has chosen to follow. Their records flow into your view; yours flow to them only as far as your visibility settings allow.
Visibility : The setting on each record that controls what leaves your instance, and how much. Not simply on or off — a facility can be discoverable while its address stays private.
Provenance : The record of where a piece of information came from and who asserted it. Matters in a federated network, where a record may have travelled through several instances before reaching you.
Normalisation : Translating inconsistent descriptions into one consistent form so they can be compared. Most of what OHM does internally. See the problem.
OKH (Open Know-How) : The standard way OHM describes a design. See OKH and OKW.
OKW (Open Know-Where) : The standard way OHM describes a facility. See OKH and OKW.
RFQ (request for quotation) : The document you'd send a workshop to ask what it would take for them to build something. OHM can generate these, though this isn't yet available in the web app.