Roll-out Should Have Been Better
Well, that throws a monkey in the wrench....
It would have been nice to have a little time to prepare for the change in pricing and have a test system to work with for a month?? Maybe I did not get get notice because I have not opened my store yet. If I had opened my store and this was sprung on me like this it would really hurt!!
The first problem I had was not trying to get things face up (a new capability anyway), but dealing with a big price increase for my four part small N Scale station; in old print form just
2.043 x / 2.298 y / 1.946 z inches of space. The print price went from $35.65 to $44.87. Looking at the cost break down, the new price was 46.2% machine space. This is because of the empty space above three parts that are short but now all the space above them counts based on the tallest part.
Figure 1 is my already expensive $36 station becoming a $45 station, ouch!!! Then it took some time to understand what was happening, and I found out that if I load each part as a separate model (+ $2.50 each) I could lower the price to about $34. But anyway, I am still fixing the model, much more painful that adding handles and flags. The idea of setting the model up-side during printing and the potential for lower prices is nice. But it requires learning new arrangements of models and their parts.
I believe, perhaps, it would have been nice to have a month on a test system to adjust the model drawing arrangements to make best use of the pricing. This would also be to Shapeways advantage, since rearranged models make better use of the printer resources.
As it was it has been a terrible shock!!
The future awaits us....
Charles Sloane
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