max volume throws price off

sorry if this subject has already been brought up and complained about - searched and didn't see it.

so my canvas wrap model here https://www.shapeways.com/model/119276/canvas_wrap.html
has a base cost of 23.60. but w/ my estimate of what the maximum volume is, the max price is 56.50 and thats if some one wants to make the entire back solid, which isn't likely. the 56.50 is what anybody sees when they're browsing thru models. A price range really needs to be presented to the users. i would pass my canvas wrap w/o looking based on the price.

Totally agree.

My iPod Case (https://www.shapeways.com/model/115975/) is the same way. I dont like how expense I have to say it is, when really, it could be a little bit cheaper if someone drew a design that required less material. (although, in my case that would mean more work for me....)

I realize WHY Shapeways does this.....but i think there could be a better way.

We do to. But does anyone know what this better way is?

We want to be enable the customer to buy something as they see it for the price they see it in.

Joris

The way it is now is very nice for colored models. I've pondered this one myself. For smaller objects the difference is very little. But as we build larger things the price difference can be 100% (as seen here) or more. Perhaps in the future with these "draw it" things, We can have a pixel to dollar counter. Have the draw it be a MS paint like thing, and as the person adds pixels it adds cost.

yea, i agree the customer has to be aware of the potential cost they could be paying, but not turned away.

maybe for any co-create either don't show any price on the browsing/gallery pages, and then on the model page post a set price range. I don't think the customer needs an exact cost as they draw it, but if they have a range they know the more they add/draw the closer they'll get to the top of the range.

Another solution I suggested was the price range idea, but shapeways wants payment first, and I'm sure you don't want to design it for the person to say never mind. Perhaps it should be a Deposit of so much, with the notice that there design could add up to an addition so much charge based on material. So even if they say never mind you and shapeways still gets paid.

ohhh, you're saying thats how much they pay no matter what? i didn't realize that, probably from lack of reading. but I like that even less now. so when the actual cost of printing is 25 bucks and they pay 50 who is given the difference? does that all go to me? Yea, they need to be paying the actual cost. plus my mark up.

where is the check to see the part we uploaded for a co-design is actually within the volume we set? meaning, I've set the max volume on my co-design stuff, but the change is in the texture, not the volume of the part. So if I upload a bigger part than I said, is the customer charged more later? Is the part printed anyway? Of does anyone even really know it's larger than we put in the template?

The volume is automatically checked when you upload your model for production.

Does it get rejected automaticly at upload if it's too large? Or does it get kicked back later? So, since it's being checked, then I can put some guess for max volume, and as long as my design for that customer stays below that I can upload, so at least for some things I can live with that. It's still tricky to adapt that to some designs though, as the volume can be vastly different, making the max price unreasonable for most purchases.

One thing I've considered is creating the same model, but done 3 different store entries, for "small" "medium" and "Large" which would at least give customers a bit of a break if they have a "small" co-design instead of a large one. Maybe Shapeways could allow 3 buttons in a single store entry for S/M/L, each haveing a different Max volume amount. They then charge based on what the customer picks when they order. and the designer then makes sure the uploaded model fits the approprate size as well.

Yes it automatically tells you, that it's too big and needs to be redone. If you go under the extra goes to shapeways. I agree with the S/m/l idea, I think it would be nice to go to a ring and have the choice of size. you click on the size, it tells you the price of that size. But that's why shapeways is in Beta. When you're the first of you kind in many aspects you have to do it, and either take the praise or the hazing. In most cases an equal amount of both. With our help they will be bigger strong faster, and by helping hopefully in the long run they'll make us richer .

Very good point. I agree that a "range of sizes" approach would be great, so one "product" would actually consist of a set of models, and the buyer would choose which to have printed.

Actually, it doesn't even need to involve multiple models, a simple price / category calculator would be ok. The main price would say "from $25" (the pricing for 0.9cm2+markup, taxes etc), but the co-creator ordering form would have drop down select boxes to choose the size, and the price would update when its changed, just as it does now when changing material.

The designer would have to complete a little table of variations and their max volumes (that needn't just be sizes of course - could be thickness or number of points or number of letters) like:

small - 0.9cm2
med - 1.2cm2
large - 1.6cm2

Although this simplistic approach is very useful for a product like Jeff's where the user decides how much complexity to put in. A different solution is required for that - it needs to be interactive, and I don't see how that can be done using the current cocreator workflow.

Sandy Noble

Hi all,

There are different issues here, I think.

For rings (or for shoes ) it is very usual that the prices do not depend on the size (simplicity is sometime better than precision). For me, in this case, the only problem is who get the money paid by the client for inexisting material. Currently it is Shapeways, and I guess shop-owners would be less reluctant to this mechanism (one price for all sizes) if the extra money would go to them (or at least part of this money).

In the case of big variations, it is different and I see two solutions:

1) the co-creator page calculates automatically (and immediately) the price based on the data entered by the client: the shop-owner has to provide a formula depending on the parameters that gives the actual volume. Not always possible, but in case it is feasable this should be available (small/medium/large is a special case of this).

2) the client ask the shop owner for a quotation (an estimate). This change a little bit the process. To be fair for the client, the shop-owner has to do this estimate for free (even if after seeing the estimate, the client decide not to buy the object) and the actual price once the object is designed cannot be more than the estimate. Perhaps some shop-owners are ready to do so.

What do you think?

In most cases your are right about sizes all being the same price. But go to a ring store, and look for a ring. Find one that you love. And ask for it in your size. Chances are the ring you found isn't the right size, and that if it is re-sizable, it isn't cheap. Go to a clothing store, and most are now set up that kids are one section adults are another, and the racks are set up by sizes. Sometimes you'll see a shirt in medium that isn't available in XL. And in some occasions, you'll find it and it could be a few dollars more. Now as far as clothing and shoes, you are more likely to find the price be the same, but I've noticed that changing lately.

As far as your fix ideas, the first seems similar to my add pixels add cost. A co-creator, where the person draws it themselves, or even uploads an image and it auto calculates the price of the added/subtracted material.

The second, I could see, at this point in time, a lot of quotes being requested with no orders. Once more people know what Shapeways is about, then that could be feasible. But quoting takes time. You go to the mechanic and a quote costs money. My girl went to get a quote on a tattoo and it cost $20 just for them to draw it up. Time is money.

sorry I meant to say that this simplistic approach is _NOT_ very useful for a product like Jeff's. minor details!!!

I agree Magic, size is not traditionally the thing that affects the price, because traditionally the main cost is the labour, and the the actual material is the cheap bit.

Most clothing of a particular design costs the same regardless of size - at either end of the bell curve (very small, very big) cost more but it's because of volume of sales rather than amount of materials. The cost of material isn't big, and doesn't have a big effect of the final sale price except for very high value materials and very low cost products.

This kind of automated additive manufacturing that we do turns all that upside down of course and it's possible to very closely measure the various costs of manufacturing, design and materials. We barely have overheads. I don't even think it's necessarily a good idea to try and imitate traditional models of manufacturing pricing and cost in this brave new world, but I appreciate that me still might want to, even if just so we fit into the common retail environment.

I think we'd all agree that Magic's first ideal is the best one - there's some magic (ho ho!) equation that will automatically calculate the volume. Unfortunately I think the answer to this is a parameterised 3d model in conjunction with a bunch of equations, and it'll get resized in real-time and the volume recalculated. It's the only way I can think of doing it properly.

Co-creators are A Big Idea though, and could quite easily become little mini-apps for customising 3d models, the same way that ordering a pizza online tots the cost up as you add toppings and change the size. At the moment Shapeways can't do something of that sophistication, but I don't imagine it's too far off.

Youknowwho - Ponoko have a system where you can upload a simple scan of a hand drawing and they convert it to line art and tell you how much it'll cost to have laser cut, so it's actually baked already.

(There's room for a canny coder to come along and develop a web front-end that allows a user to modify the parameters of a 3d model, and that could quite easily slot into the shapeways sales model.)

The idea of the quoting system I think wouldn't be a winner for Shapeways, I think they buy into the idea of being able to appear to be a regular retail outlet - one price, one order, and a lot of users will be put off by knowing that they have to wait for a real person to deal with them and decide how much they can be taken for.

Still no solution! Lots of talking though

sn

good discussion here!

ok, the ponoko solution would work pretty well for any 2D application. on my ipad wrap i can just convert any sketch to line art and determine the percentage of the space covered. I know the price range so i can apply the % added and figure the new cost. Using that method I'd be fine with quoting as i could do it very quick. that being said it wouldn't work for a 3D application, if i had a lot of orders or other co-creators to quote I'd get backed up, and i don't think its best for the customer.

at this point i think having a tiered price range s-m-l would be the best temporary fix. Its not the final solution but its better then what we have now.

An automated system to calculate cost from a digital drawing would be fraught with problems, but it could be made to work if it supplied a "guess" based on the image uploaded and then added on a safety margin so the designer has some scope for interpretation and fixing problems.

So even though the system only sees $20 worth of pixels, it charges 50% extra and the designer gets $30 worth of plastic to play with. If the designers then only ends up using $15 then of course there's still that spare $15 that falls into shapeways' account, but at least the overall price to the buyer is a bit more reasonable.

Difficult to perfect and open to abuse.

The size range sm/med/large would be perfect for something that has a static set of sizes like rings. In your case I guess you'd have flexible/regular/stiff or light/medium/heavy, but I don't see any way to stop users from uploading a complex solid image into a co-creator that has a "light" price.

A compromise might be to physically restrict the size of the customisable bit of the design - the "light" only has a designable portion that is a quarter of the size of the "heavy", if you see what I mean. That's a rubbish solution for the wrap actually but might work in some other products [that I can't think of right now].

cheers
sn

i could kinda see that idea of limiting the amount of possible co-creation to different tiers kind of working. i could make 3 versions of the canvas wrap with the actual canvas border being smaller/bigger in each. that way there is less possible total volume.

that being said it still is specific to certain applications and not an overall solution.

hmmm.

and you're right, there could be a visually complicated design someone draws that covers the whole back, thats actually only 50% max volume. and it could be hard for the customer to look at their design and guess accurately what category S-M-L it falls into...

So maybe Youknowho's suggestions of a deposit might work. So in the gallery the price would say starting at 25$. the customer pays that, submits the completed sketch template, the designer uploads the custom co-creator file and the customer is billed the remaining amount. then shapeways prints the custom part. And the customer will need to be aware of the maximum price their design could potentially be so as to avoid customers backing out.

Or a little twist on the deposit idea is this- the designer chooses what the deposit is. The deposit becomes the designers mark-up. So the designer gets 100% of the deposit at the beginning. then we make the co-creator file - upload it- shapeways charges the user however much the 3D printing cost and they keep all that money. so bad part is the customer has to pay twice. good part is they get a cheaper product, designers are paid for their time no mater what, and shapeways doesn't print till paid in full.

what ya think?

I'm not sure any kind of to-ing and fro-ing with quotes or deposits and things like that would appeal much to shapeways - They seem very keen on the idea of pay up front, and then they subcontract the design. They're attached to the idea of being a manufacturer first and foremost, but one with a big library of in-house design/ers that a customer can choose from. There are plenty of other "showcase" type sites that get sellers directly in touch with makers (etsy, and I suppose ponoko is another) so there's no point in reinventing that, and I have to say, I like not having to deal with shipping and all that stuff.

I think the products that are on offer here are so diverse that there can never be an overall solution, without some sort of API to allow sellers to write their own co-creators. So that a seller can code something that arrives at a object volume, using whatever algorithm they can cook up, as long as they also promise that they can create a final model that sticks to that limit. That way shapeways get their firm price straight away and can get paid up front, the designer gets a max volume target to work within and the customer gets a price that actually reflects the cost of the manufacturing.

Actually, that fact (cost changes depending on size) alone is the thing that most turns things upside down for me (and people I tell about shapeways) - you get what you pay for and there's no sneaky sales/marketing stuff going on to try and fleece you. And the fixe prix of a co-creator seems to defeat that a bit. It just doesn't seem fair to anyone. I agree that there is not an awful lot to be done about it right now.

Maybe the difference between what the item cost to manufacture and what the customer paid could be reissued as a credit note for the customer, to encourage them to come back, ("Good news! Your co-creator design turned out smaller than expected, why not come back and buy some more goodies!?" etc) and to make them a little less afraid of buying the big ticket items? It would be automated. Of course a bit less profit for shapeways, but joris always seem fairly embarrassed about that money going to them anyway!

Good work on your solid smack writeup too jeff!


Sandy Noble