Upload error reports should be more helpful

I'm new to Shapeways and to 3D design in general, and I am having a frustrating time uploading my first model.

I've drawn something in Art Of Illusion, and converted it from .obj to .dae with AccuTrans 3D.

When I upload it, I get a mail with this message: "Based upon the size, volume and wallthickness of your model there is no printer available which is able to print your model."

The upload page is not specific about the units that Shapeways expect. I've tried scaling it to get a sensible size in mm and in cm, but I get the same message.

I've also tried .x3d, and got "The fileformat of your object cannot be processed by our software.", and .stl, and got "We found some problems in your model 'ballandfish_stl' that we may be able to fix for you."

I expect I am doing something stupid, but with so little feedback I am having trouble working out what.

It would help if the upload page were specific about the units that I should use.

And it would also help if the error message told me more. For example, it could tell me the size, volume, and wall thickness that Shapeways measures in my model, and tell me what the acceptable ranges were.

It would be even easier for me if these checks did not prevent the model appearing in 'my designs', so I could see the model after it was uploaded and see what the Shapeways system thought of it.

Sorry for all the complaining, but as a new user this is an off-putting experience.

Thanks,

Richard

Here, here, I agree completely. I've now spent several hours trying to get *anything* to upload. I've used both 3dsmax and blender with STL and COLLADA and I've just gotten the same (3?) emails over and over with non-specific errors leaving me guessing as to what I should fix. Starting to feel very stupid but I don't know what to do...

You are not alone ! I tried to upload five STL files - only two of them are now in "My Designs"... For both Viscam View and MiniMagics the five files are good.

I'm glad it's not just me.

For what it's worth, my troubled STL upload was eventually deemed printable.

Which is good, but also mysterious, because as far as I know it contained the same model as one of the un-printable Collada uploads.

Well, maybe it helps to let you know that as soon as your model is too big to be printed, you'll get a quite different message, so that means. Your model is too small,
or contains parts that are too thin to be printed (less than 0.5mm)

I must admitt, that I got error_emails A LOT!
mostly due to holes, size and nonmanifold objects, they do read all different.
And if you read closely you'll find that the information given in the email are pretty much what you need.

Sure they are not specific, they are based on a standard error message.
Sure there is no hint what specific part of your file is not printable.

That would require a person watching the test, and sending the email, to provide proper Information.
Or (what's almost undoable too)
To have a coloured highlight in a screenshot send with the message.

I think they use maybe a set of maybe five to seven different messages:
"too small"
"too big"
"non manifold"
"open vertices"
"wrong normals"
and so on.

It'd be a good idea to know which error leads to wich message, and in what order the file is checked.
So let's say you'll get a message that's because of nonmanifold edges.
Then you know: size is okay, smallest spans are okay, until now no open vertices
And you can add edges to the model to get it manifold.

But:
If you do have a problem with any model that you cannot identify or solve at all,
you can ask in the forum (attaching your model) the team is always there to help,
letting you know what part you'll have to edit.

'sid

ps Don't be too sure about the stl though!
It may pass the upload test, but the actual print-test is a different story
I do have models in my folder that are marked as printable but they are NOT!
(I keep them because the renderings are not smoothed like the new uploads)

I'm sorry, but I get the same message nearly every time:

Based upon the size, volume and wallthickness of your model there is no printer available which is able to print your model.

So what exactly is wrong with my model? As far as I can tell, I have no non-manifold edges, the model is "watertight", any walls are at least 3-4 mm thick and it's within size spec.

We've just done a new release that includes more information on what went wrong when checking the files. We also have a feature in the development pipeline that will allow you to look at your model in the viewer and it will show you issues we discovered, particularly in manifold and wallthickness checks. However, if your model fails much earlier in the process due to badly formatted files (we see a lot of that due to bugged exporters from almost all the popular editors) then obviously that won't help.

In the processing pipeline we are producing much more specific errors about exactly what in the format is going wrong. However, sometimes those messages come from deep within the XML parser (eg for collada) and so they can look really, really ugly and not understandable by a non-programmer. So we've elected to not pass those on for now until we've worked out a way to clean them up into a human, rather than machine-readable form.

Thanks - I like the sound of the improved messages, and of being able to see specific problems in the Shapeways viewer.

But, I just tried one of my problem files again, and got this:

Based upon the size, volume and wallthickness of your model there is no printer available which is able to print your model. Please adjust the volume and/or size of your model.

which does not look like one of your improved messages.

Does that really mean the size or wallthickness is wrong ? Or does it realy mean that the file has some kind of syntax problem ?

I understand that the detailed error messages from a failed parse may be a bit incomprehensible, but they would at least tell me that I had a tools problem rather than a model problem.

Right now, I still don't know if that model is fifty metres across or if I did something wrong in AccuTrans.

Thanks,

Richard

This is a rather weird problem. I'm one of the devs of the website and i looked up what you had to do to get that error message and it was a fallthrough error message.

This may seem strange, especially because of the error you get, but if i read the code correctly your model doesn't qualify for any of the printers. After you don't qualify we try to find out why you don't qualify. Size, volume, wallthickness. Those however don't return a error. (They have specific error messages that will tell you exactly what is wrong)
You pass trough all those checks without a problem. So basically what the message you get means is. "There is something wrong with your model, but we don't know what"

So i guess the best course of action for you is to simply contact a shapeways team person, and let them take a look at it. You might even have found a bug

I've just found another problem with our code not giving useful error messages. Recently we have seen a few model uploads fail due to HTTP errors, leaving a partially complete file on the system, which we are then asked to process. Our code was not giving the right errors when detecting this situation. Perhaps this is your problem? Did you get upload timeouts on a really large file (a couple we've seen this on are dropping out at about 40MB of a 60+MB file).

Interesting - in that case, I wonder if it would make sense to change that message.

If I understand you correctly, it means that there is a problem which is definitely *not* to do with size or wall thickness..

I've attached the file here in case you want to take a look at it. It is not one that I want to print, just the product of me trying to work out how to work the toolchain, but I would love to know what was wrong with it.

Thanks,

Richard

Just got this error when uploading a .obj file(i know its not supported)

The file is too large. The upload limit for Shapeways is 64 MB. If you have an exceptionally complex model that you would like to print, please contact us.


the file size was 2.41 MB

Just got another error, this time with correct format and file size



We're sorry, but there was a problem with processing your model called 'Untouchable': it didn't pass the checks that we run to make sure a model is printable. Here's the error message; it may help you determine what went wrong:

The size is 0.4 cm x 0.4 cm x 0.2 cm (h x w x d). Our production methods can only produce objects as small as 50.0000 cm x 50.0000 cm x 50.0000 cm (h x w x d). Please rescale it to make it bigger.

While I agree the error messages are generally confusing, I think this one is pretty straightforward. It would seem your model is too small (4 mm x 4 mm x 2 mm in fact, which is slightly smaller than a contact lens).

Hi all,

Your points on the somewhat cryptic error message is high on our priority list.

Cheers!

Robert