Have X,Y,Z axes changed for up-axis?

I'm trying to figure out if something has changed with regards to the up-axis in the render options.

Old design (Dec 2013) looks like this with Y up-axis chosen:



But today I uploaded some new variants and they look like this also with Y up-axis chosen:



The first was an old model and I remember there being some changes here when the render option was first introduced so it could be due to that. Or it could be something resulting from the upgrade. Or something changed in the design software but I've got the parts oriented the same way back then and now.

The best render orientation I can get with the new design is similar to the old but with the hanging loop pointing down instead of up. So I could flip things around and re-upload the designs but I'd rather not until I figure out the reason for the change and if it is permanent. Am I the only one experiencing this?

Looking into this some more it appears as though the axis references for the model page view and the axis references for the render views are not necessarily consistent within Shapeways.



So the first thing I did was to draw XYZ axes in Tinkercad using their standard. Over there the horizontal workplane is the XY plane, with +X to the right and +Y away from the keyboard. The +Z axis is upwards towards the ceiling. So when we upload that and look at it in the model page render after the preliminary auto movements finish we get the same orientation so here Tinkercad and Shapeways seem to agree:



However when you look at the x,y,z render options things begin to get weird:



I realize this is all a bit arbitrary but in another sense there must be a clear standard for file formats that define "true" x,y, and z directions. In order to get Tinkercad to match Shapeways +X remains the same pointing to the right, +Y points upwards, and the Z axis is on the horizontal workplane with +Z pointing towards the keyboard. So someone is doing something differently which isn't necessarily surprising, but it seems to me that since the model preview in Shapeways does not match the render options that it's the renders where some axes are swapped and at least one sign error has crept into the works. Again I wouldn't really care other than the fact that the Shapeways render axes appear to have changed at some point in time either for the better or for the worse.


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One more possibility that I can't check now (Tinkercad is being updated) is that the old pendant file was uploaded in stl format and the new ones and the XYZ example were uploaded in x3d format. Perhaps Tinkercad and Shapeways are using different axis references in those two file formats. I love troubleshooting!

I looked at the last stl file I uploaded in Nov 2014 and everything seems to match between Tinkercad, Shapeways, and the shapeways model view and the render views. More recent x3d files do appear to have the Y axis pointing upwards. So this does in fact appear as though Tinkercad and Shapeways have different axis references for x3d files. I'll know more tomorrow when I upload the XYZ axis file in stl format from Tinkercad.

To compound the issue slightly, the "up" axis is different between x3d, wrl, and stl files.
The standard for STL is z-up.

If I upload the same file in stl format the view on the model page is the same as for x3d format (see above). So if there are inherent differences in file formats the 3D viewer on the model page is compensating for differences, at least for stl and x3d formats. Also the render directions are correct for the stl case. But I think the key take away is that there is an inconsistency between the model page 3D viewer and the axis directions of the renderer for the store images for different file formats.