| Scale! [message #43247] Tue, 31 January 2012 22:54 UTC |
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I don't know if this has been discussed before, it seems like it would be so easy to add a little slider to scale a model by a little bit to get the price just where you want it, no? Forgive me if this has been discussed before - but re uploading models just to make scale tweaks is a pain.
Otherwise, I love shapeways, keep up the good work.
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| Re: Scale! [message #43254 is a reply to message #43249 ] Tue, 31 January 2012 23:29 UTC |
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I DEFINITELY concur with this. Not sure how easy it is to implement, but this would be incredibly helpful.
-Saad
http://www.saga-3d.com/
[Updated on: Tue, 31 January 2012 23:30 UTC]
http://www.saga-3d.com/
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| Re: Scale! [message #43255 is a reply to message #43254 ] Wed, 01 February 2012 01:01 UTC |
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The only technical difficulty I could see with this would be in checking for minimum wall thickness on-the-fly. Otherwise, it might be possible to scale a model's size down below printability for a particular material, or oversize it to the point that minimum wall thickness needs to be increased.
Simply scaling is extremely easy, but checking for minimum tolerances per material might be more difficult.
Still, something I'm surprised hasn't already been implemented.
[Updated on: Wed, 01 February 2012 01:02 UTC]
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| Re: Scale! [message #43271 is a reply to message #43247 ] Wed, 01 February 2012 07:41 UTC |
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The trouble is with a scale slider, the designer would need to ensure a printable minimum size (wall thickness, detail etc) - I created some 1:76 scale telephone kiosks, at this size with the detail they have, they are at the absolute minimum for FUD, going smaller would require a complete design change, going bigger would require design changes to ensure the correct level of detail for the scale and to keep the cost down.
[edit] If you haven't got NetFabb Basic (free) yet- go get it you can rescale and it shows the model volume, as well as having loads of other invaluable tools.
[Updated on: Wed, 01 February 2012 07:44 UTC]
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| Re: Scale! [message #43297 is a reply to message #43271 ] Wed, 01 February 2012 16:58 UTC |
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I did a little writeup about scaling here:
http://stonysmith.com/wired/scaling.asp
Scaling UP is rather easy, but it doesn't provide minimum cost.. scaling DOWN is the problem... you run into minimum wall thickness too fast.
Patience, Persistance, Politeness - the 3Ps will help us get us to Perfect Printed Products
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| Re: Scale! [message #43441 is a reply to message #43247 ] Sat, 04 February 2012 10:28 UTC |
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Adding additional database fields to the model might somewhat help: If the minumum wall thickness, minimum detail thickness, minimum gap of the originalk model are given, they scale down accoringly and can be tested against the material limits.
However, as has been said, scaling up won't help save money. And many models are probably already optimized by hollowing them out to minimum wall thickness, thus cannot be scaled down a lot.
I do see an advantage with e.g. rings that could be adjusted to finger size - but only in a small range. Since design for different ssizes is not just a matter of simply scaling up or down (e.g. a text printed with a 20 pt face is not - or should not - be simply a 10 pt text doubled in size), such a range would have to be kept small and should at least be limited by the designer
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| Re: Scale! [message #43547 is a reply to message #43441 ] Mon, 06 February 2012 16:55 UTC |
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I can definitely see how this would be useful for the community.
Stony's right about the scaling down getting to be an issue easily, but since automatic wall thickness checking is something I know my team has somewhere up their sleeve, they could balance each other out nicely.
I didn't see an item for this on Uservoice, but if one was created, I'd suggest you post it here since you already have a little cluster of supporters. 
Community Manager | Shapeways
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