Mini City: printable?

I have been offering my Mini City model for sale on Shapeways, and last week I was delighted that I made a sale of this large full-color model. Unfortunately, despite a whole lot of effort in modeling, testing and refining the model, the model was classified as unprintable in full-color and the order was cancelled. Since the model is far less interesting without color, I've uploaded a Micro City (1/4 size) to show off the strengths of the Frosted Detail materials.

Here is the error that was detected in my model.


As you can see, the model is shown as being only a fraction of a millimeter wide. That is because the software they are using is a free program called Minimagics that does not support VRML format, and does not support meters. The professional version, Magics, supports VRML and meters, but this method is used so that we can all enjoy low priced prints. That would be great... if it worked. The file is being converted to a non-color STL file before being checked, but because the units are wrong, the vertices are detected as overlapping, and the model appear to have errors. I tried the same thing, but first compensated for the conversion error by scaling the model back to millimeters. In that case the model is approved!



I have made customer service aware of the issue. I have to raise the issue here because I hope whoever tried to buy the Mini City sees this and knows I did whatever I could to make a great model that is a worthwhile purchase, but because of a technical problem beyond my control, the model didn't get anywhere near a 3D printer.

The good news is, you can still get the model, and for far less money!

Mini City on Etsy

I am selling it on Etsy for 50% less than the Shapeways price. I am offering a guarantee on all of my full color models. I am so sure of the ease of printing with my models, that if a model fails to print on Shapeways, I will make it available on Etsy at half the price for the first sale. The models will also have better colors and a stronger, higher quality coating.

In addition to the Mini City, you can also find the Fleeting Time Keeper for only $10. These delicate versions of my metal Time Keeper are a great example of what to expect from this process.

I like your Nano City Array on etsy, reminds me of Micro Machine Cities a little bit.

Interesting format issue you had there and the work around as well.

It looks like you built the mini city to interlock with adjacent sections? Pretty cool.

Glad you like it. The sections do not actually lock together, and not all off the streets line up at all angles. It still looks good when tiled, even if the layout doesn't make any real sense. You can download the Wings3D file from the original thread and play around with it Here. This was more of a test to see what's possible. I have some great scale model landscapes of historical areas that I'm working on, but they are very detailed and time consuming. I would like to sell them on Shapeways, but it will have to be Etsy until the issues with Sandstone material are addressed.

There is tons of potential with this material (see my Ultra Thin Wall thread). I think it is only the format problems holding everyone back, otherwise this would be as popular as FUD, and it has no start-up cost!

What format problems? Float precision? That was workarrounded long ago, everyone in the know just edits the file to add the proper scale directive (or at least that worked over a year ago when prototyping a bunch of items). Sticky/scratchable coating, plus color variance (some due the coating), are the current issues (which parked the prototypes as "meh, maybe if the customer wants to do some extra work").

I was referring more to the fact that many people, even some experienced 3D modelers, may not have any experience with color. The peculiarities of the format and varying support for it in software make it harder than it should be.

I do remember reading that they began supporting the scaling factor not long after launching the material. This is a related problem, but at the other end. The file uploads to Shapeways fine. The unnecessary conversion to STL for inspection can still cause this problem in some cases, because the object is 1000x smaller than it should be. I would like to see millimeters being hard-coded as the permanent unit for VRML. I understand that existing models would have to be reprocessed for compatibility, but I think it's the best solution.

I'm sure the other problems with the material will go away as soon as Shapeways finds a good supplier. Until then, maybe it's not a bad thing that I can operate without these limitations myself, but it kind of puts a damper on me presenting and offering my color models here.