I would love to set up my own web site with my own virtual inventory manigment system and be able to let customers buy on my site and I just send you a few files and the address to ship to through the api. This would fix the issue that it currently takes 10minutes for an instant co create to be rendered by your server. Your server can be rendering while the customer is paying me. Would be even better if my earnings could be seen as a bank account of sorts. You could keep say $200 balance held back and if any orders go through you take off that. If a customer orders on my site you take the build cost of my account. if they order off yours you work with it as normal. If my account gets above $250 you pay me the $50 difference like you would normally. If it drops to $0 or negatives you send me a bill to bring it back to $200 before you process the order. That would just be ideal as it minimizes the amount of transactions needed but not necessary. What would be necessary is that the bill be printed at rates I charged. I.E. add the profits in even though you did not charge yourself. To make this simpler it would be best if I can submit sale price instead of profit margin. It is always possible I could sell a model at a loss this way do to math error but that would not be your fault. Were a math error if I have to submit profits may make my customer think I am cheating them. I don't plan to get rid of my shop. Just having my own store gives me more control over the layout and make hopefully easier and increase sales. Please consider as this could only increase your sales. And would give me a lot better things to do with some of my domain names.
How about this... How long does it take shapeways to only run it's checks? To just check if the file is manifold and such? What if it is a lot quicker to do that? You could allow API users to supply their own thumbnail perhaps, and have the shapeways system only check for faults. Or even skip the error check as well (for a trusted source)... though I do like the fact that there's a check in there.
turns out manifold check is the long part. and shapeways cs already told me they will not bypass this system.
Right, that makes sense... I thought the render would be pretty quick on it's own. Perhaps then some way of showing progress on the page with the model whilst it's being checked. I don't mind shapeways checking my models at all.. I'm just worried our customers may perhaps not be the most patient.
Yup, that's the one thing that worries me... I wonder if there's a neat way around that... How about telling people on your own website that it may take 10 minutes, to keep their browser open... and you use json calls to check if the page with the model is "up" on shapeways. And once it's done you forward people there, but not before... No idea if people would go for that sort of thing...
i am going to start asking for emails. I will email them when the system is done. This only works though if you are using a separate demon to generate and do not require the user stay on your site. Still not ideal.