Road To Major Fud Improvements Starts With Repricing

Mitchell Jetten,

For the list of what to add: Could you include adding a transparent machine space graphic to the Support Material Tool. It would be a fourth check on-off item on the display graphic. I think this would do a lot to visually show designers important information affecting the cost of their model. In my case my Hay Street Station N Scale has 55% of the cost in machine space by my current drawing. And it took me a while to realize what was happening. There was a lot of empty space ($$) above short parts because of the tall part in the drawing.

All the best,
Charles Sloane

Uploading some sprued tiny figure sets as request for a good customer.

All these are in the same sprues configuration, only slightly more robust some of these figures, but the position of figures and thickness of sprues are just the same.

Well, two of the sets are standing supported, but the third set,... oh, surprise! comes in "flat" position!

First of all, I have to repeat that this flat position is my main goal to have the better detail face out the wax.

But you can see that "flat" model is also slightly cheaper. My opinion is that both support configurations are so closest in price that the price difference is low, BUT THE QUALITY DIFFERENCE IS CLEARLY BIG.

Judge yourself:

@HOLDEN8702,
just curious... is there a reason you don't use the space between the figures to fit the figures from the next row? I'm asking because you could considerable. decrease the footprint. Right now there is a lot of empty space you'll have to pay for (or your customer).

And FWIW: I really hope we can set the orientation ASAP. Until we can it is almost impossible to communicate the new prices to my customers.

These are tiny figures, 1/350 scale, about 5.3 mm. tall, and the distance among bases is only about 1 mm.
But the main reason is standarization: in these sets, the figures keep his arms and legs very close to body, but in another figure sets a closer position would led to rotate figures or make special positions of bases and sprues. As more standarized was these, better to convert all the older sets.
Sure can be spent an entire day doing the "Tetris" with figure elbows and bodies, but in my experience with these experiments after Strong Flexible curse years ago, I saw the cost saved is ridiculous.

Hello All,

Here is an image of the model split into parts from my earlier message with three geometric orientations and their prices, the Support Materials Tool seems to look for common parts and renders the part only once. So only half of the parts of the model show up in the support render.


Figure 1 - The Six Part HO Tank with Access Port

Note, this is an experiment, normally I would add location tabs to help align the parts during assembly. I believe I would not split through the access port if this were a production model. I would also try to split on natural seams and lines.

All the best,
Charles Sloane

Encouraging Layout to Arrange Your Model One Way or Another...

Hello CZHunter and everyone else,

These images show (I hope) how I arranged my model to get Shapeways Print Layout to use different geometric orientations.

Nominal default arrangement (vertical in this case); model aligned with the X, Y, Z axis in the drawing program.


Model laying on one side arrangement; note the model is tilted (my term) from the X-Y plane by 5 degrees. This was enough to add a bunch of filler in the vertical alignment, so vertical is no longer the cheapest arrangement.


Model laying face up; the model was turned in the X-Y plane 45 degrees so that both the side and vertical arrangements have a ton of filler, making them more expensive.


This is an introduction, if anyone wants to try this stuff. There are other effects, I can go into later, and some tricks I believe will persuade Layout to pick the desired geometric arrangement (that is until Shapeways provides the real function).

All the best,
Charles Sloane

PS, I believe Shapeways Layout in essence rolls the coordinate cube (Figure 4) onto each of the six sides X, X', Y, Y', Z, Z' and calculates the print cost of the model, it then picks the lowest cost.

Another Proposed Change, "Next 3 Renders"

Alan,

Thanks for the reply. Maybe there could be a "next 3 parts" button, like paging through a discussion with many posts. Once things settle down I suppose the demand for renders will drop, after people learn what to expect?

All the best,
Charles Sloane

@AlanHudson , When the orientation tool is up and running, will a designer be able to orient each part in a multi-part model individually or will all of the part stay in the same relationship that they were uploaded?

Wow - who's putting 250 loose parts in a model? No wonder SW needed to revise the pricing scheme!

@Andrew and @Mitchell - can I add to the mix? When I hover over the price for the material in a model I get a pop-up box listing "Labor: £XX Material Volume: £XX Machine Volume: £XX Per file:£XX Support Volume:£XX Material Volume: £XX Machine Space: £XX" Using the fixed point of Labor as the $2.50 quoted on the Materials page for FXD and applying the resulting conversion, I cannot figure out why a model with two parts comes up to £2.38. (I made the $/£ rate to be 1.344 based on Labor/Handling.) While the overall price looks good and cheap, the actual figures don't seem to add up! It really does NOT help that the terms used differ between the Materials spec sheet, the model upload stats, and this pop-up box - you need to harmonise the terms so we can see exactly how the numbers transfer across.

I think getting these numbers/terms to all tally across the web pages for full pricing transparency is actually MORE of a priority for SW right now than getting the Orientation tool sorted. (Who'd ever have thought I'd say that about anything that got in the way of user-defined orientation?...)

(BTW the model I uploaded to test this was https://www.shapeways.com/product/GXNFVGW2R/?key=d22e722a7c880492cc8f01b1debf68ff. The support view shows them standing on end, so I won't be ordering any until I can set the orientation to lay them flat with the detailed faces pointing "up"...)

Oh, and since this model is cheaper than it would have been under the old system, please know that I am not complaining! I just think there are some important details you need to get right about this new structure.

The difference is probably VAT, the same thing has been confusing people on the thread discussing the change in prices of cast metals,

Mark

VAT will be in there somewhere, probably on some components and not others, but if the ratio of "Handling" to "Parts" is 2.5/2 in USD, it should still be about the same in GBP! At the moment my 2-part model should have Handling of $2.50 and "Per Part" of $2 which is £1.86 and £1.49 respectively, but for some reason the "Labor" is only £1.86 but the "Per Part" is £2.38. Clearly there isn't a 1:1 correlation between the different terms and the costs they represent, so this needs to be cleared up. VAT should add 20% to some of the costs, but the "per part" count is way out if it should be $2 - at present it is slightly more than $3 when reverse-converted. And being based on $1/part, it really ought to come out in whole dollars, no?

Ah, good point. I'll have to have a look at some of my models and see if I can make the numbers add up,

Mark

Putting a Handle on Orienting the Model

BarkingDigger,

How about from this:

To this:

This wheel is 1" diameter and 1/2" thick, my poor man's tank sprocket...

If this helps,
Charles Sloane

PS, FXD prices $8.73 vs $9.29.
PPS, I may have noticed some inconsistent behavior in the price calculations, that is for another day...

Hmmm. Interesting, Charles! But why does the "handle" have such a dramatic effect on automated orientation? I'll have to play with this one and see where it leads!

(Nothing's as stimulating as reverse-engineering the seemingly strange behaviour of a classic black-box system...)

That worked it had already tried.
Which is also well-functioning if one for example many many identical models with sprue radial arranged.