From this.. To a solid model - 15cm long Amazing that all that detail survived the trip. Or did it? On all of my ship models there are bollards bow and stern, they meet the material guidelines but never appear on the printed models. Strangely they don't appear on the rendered previews after the upload, but they definitely do exist in the STL - I can see them after re-importing the STL file into the modelling tool. Other similar small detail works perfectly - very odd????
I've seen a similar problem with a FUD model - very small details (hatch hinges on a 15mm tank) disappeared completely. It seemed to be under the area where the support material was.
With the missing parts, if the parts are saved as a group of objects within one file, there may be some parts/shells missing - solution: ensure the parts are as a merged single object, these can still be multiple-shells. Or it may be that the parts/shells share common faces, in this case, Shapeways software gets confused and doesn't know what should go where so parts go missing - solution: ensure that shells overlap slightly. Whatever is seen in the preview render is the model that gets printed.
I have had similar issues. Another possible reason may be that you have the same object twice in the same place. This happens rather easily (at least in Blender) when you want to copy an object (e.g. the bollards) and hit the copy button twice. You move one copy to the proper place, but the second one stays in place. Check the inventory of components, or remove the part that is missing. Maybe there is a second copy there. Nice model, by the way Greetings Karl Heinz
Thanks guys - I'm usually quite careful on overlaps due to the massive number of details on the model but I've not checked for duplicates, I'll try and get the model updated. around 60K triangles in that model.
I just checked them all again. All objects are solid shells, all overlap and no duplicates. The bollards are all 0.4mmx0.4mmx0.4mm which is inside the FUD limits of 0.3mm Strange that other small parts work but not these. I do suspect the after printing processing may just knock them off as they are in exposed positions. I'll increase the size by about 10% to see if that helps.
Increasing the size to 0.44 all round may have worked - you can see them in the rendered view now. https://www.shapeways.com/model/612626 perhaps there is something in the shapeways software that filters out very small parts.
I did some testing .... See here for the filtering that happens when you upload objects to shapeways: https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=5096 8&#msg_50968