Newcomers to digital fabrication often fail during initial attempts without mentor guidance, causing many to abandon these technologies completely due to a lack of self-efficacy and social support. In order for digital fabrication technologies to be accessible within diverse populations, including those in rural locations with access to fabrication machines but not experienced proximal mentors, proximal mentor roles may be partially emulated through interactions with online social resources. Existing online resources provide the information needed for individuals to learn many practices, but finding and utilizing online 3D printing resources is not always trivial. In order to participate in digital fabrication, a person needs to know how to identify and access the needed tools, and understand how these tools are utilized in related practices. HowDIY leverages machine learning methods to extract semantic information from millions of multimodal online digital fabrication resources (e.g. text, images, 3D files), and utilizes this information to recommend newcomers example projects and community discussions to jumpstart their ideation and participation with online digital fabrication communities of practice. Contact Alex to gain access to the HowDIY website.