Road To Major Fud Improvements Starts With Repricing

So many comments I did not recall that. Yes while the orientation is set these parts are not sprued, and they have already indicated that individual orientation will not be part of the tool. It does matter to me when making decisions about how to redesign the part ans a single model (if possible). The other part's orientation would have been helpful to see how the wax would have affected them si I can gauge the best orientation for the single part model.

Not really. These sprued heads (model with three different parts) were with main sprue oriented on the same side, with head backs in ground direction. As you can see, two of the sprues have been RANDOMLY oriented up and the third oriented down.

thats why we need a dedicated program to do this render/calcutate on our own machines way faster than using shapeways servers , than we could upload a masterfile to the server pre shecks and all done on our own machine

For Pricing Only or Is the Orientation Shown Printed?

Alan,

Part 1
Is the orientation shown what will be printed, or might the system change this around at print time to suit the current assortment of items printed? If the later, then at this time the orientation shown is just for pricing, not printing. (Note: the system being the people and machines involved.) (This has an interesting implication, if the arrangement of an assortment of items to be printed in one go are all controlled by an automated layout program, then setting the print orientation manually is more than just asking the designer what they want.)

Part 2
Unless it has changed in the last day or two, I also constantly have to retry to get the support material render to show up. It fails many times. Would you be interested in links to any I have problems with?

All the best,
Charles Sloane

Is there a reason you cant combine the station and the foundation int one model? Since the foundation IS the footprint of the model, combining would add some height but halve the machine space needed.

Good example of things taking to long to render, Saturday mid morning I uploaded a file and it wasn't until Sunday I got my price calculations all complete. Is the system overwhelmed with orders?

Heck if they cant get it rendered in under 15 minutes I'd be happy.

The Real Design Tips?

Crashtestdummy,

Thanks, I have done a similar thing, that is sprue the foundation under the body, still keeping them separate. It saved a lot as you surmised. I like a separate foundation to be attached to the layout and allow the building to be removed for whatever (easier painting too). I have moved a couple other parts into footprint shadows of other items, and will split the dormer from the main roof to join the footprint shadow of the back roof.

One thing I have realized (note my chart above) is that the variation of space cost with height only has a modest impact in FUD, and only a bit more in FXD. The two biggest impacts I see are 1) large spaces in old drawings that are filled with support in printing, and 2) multi-part models where there is a significant difference in the height of parts. Case 1, you pay a lot for filler, case 2 you pay a lot for space. The design guidelines would seem to be better suited to explain this and help designers understand fix approaches.

Case 1 fixes, seems to be model splitting, and
Case 2 fixes, as you indicated, overlapping shadows with combined parts or spruing.

Thanks,
Charles Sloane

Originally I had all the different parts - walls, cupola, roof and end parts - all separated and the buyer had to click to add each part to the cart. Then I wrote the code for a complete set of parts to be added to the user's cart if they clicked the link in the description that matched the caboose they wanted to buy. This seemed to work well enough, but I still never got many sales. Since grouping all the parts required to model a particular caboose in a single CAD file I've had more success selling the caboose kits.

Since the roof detail is critical to the appearance of the finished model, the roof and cupola roof must face upward to get the detail as crisp as possible. When the cupola is oriented as in your image, it may result in a cheaper print but at a lower quality than if the interior was filled with support material. I suppose I could approach the cupola the same way as the body and make the sides and ends separate from the roof, but I've been happy (enough) with the results so far.

What I didn't realize was that the space above the walls is wasted since what I'm getting from your post is that the greatest Z value of any part of the model is below the foundation of any model placed above. I figured any two or more separate models could be keyed together, like a capital L and T can be placed closer together than a capital M and T and this was the function of the algorithm Shapeways uses to orient parts. That certainly explains a lot.

I thought they said FUD/FXD is not "stacked" vertically in the build volume the way WSF is? So if you place loose items above one another in your uploaded STL file the SW tech will move them all so they are side-by-side on the deck instead. But, if one part sticks up say 20mm, while the rest are flat at only 2mm height, the Machine Space is calculated as if the whole lot were at 20mm height - at least if the parts are sprued together into one big part. So, your best bet to lower the space is to take tall items like the cupola and separate the walls to lay it out flat like a plastic model kit. It's worth experimenting with a few different layouts to see how the numbers change.

If they are loose, they are not stacked, if they are sprued (stacked), then they are stacked.
Of course with all possible issues with "wax surfaces" from both sides.

True, but it depends on how you define "stacked". From the SW perspective, sprued parts are essentially one big complicated part. By "stacked" I meant where the shells are not connected, but merely located above one another in the file to make a more compact footprint. If he connects them all by a sprue then he can force them to be stacked to better utilise the wasted Machine Space, with the usual support-wax damage that ensues.

I found that with some designs it might be worth the extra two dollars to leave them loose, but then you are at the mercy of the tech with no way to define the individual orientation of the loose parts, hence why I asked earlier about loose part orientation in the new orientation tool.

That gets back to what I said a few days ago about files taking a long time to process lately. Seems like with the orientation tool operational it would save 5/6 ,or more than 83%, of the time as only one orientation needs to be calculated not six.

Morning Mitchell
Still having issues with the model uploads page! have no idea what's going on over there! please help!
Got lots of models stacked up waiting to go and customers orders too!

processing taken age .
Who calculates in the server? A hamster?