Shapeways: Bring your creativity to life in 3D

Re: Segments of a wheel rim are disappearing - what to do?

Pico — 2013-06-18T23:11:18-00:00

I've worked on reversing faces, there are a lot of bolt heads that are going to be very time consuming. I still haven't figured on what to do with the yellow lines. Thanks, Pico

Re: Segments of a wheel rim are disappearing - what to do?

JACANT — 2013-06-18T17:54:27-00:00

If you can share the original Skp file. On the forum, by PM, or my email below. I will have a look at it for you.

Re: missing texture for color printing?

mkroeker — 2013-06-18T15:30:08-00:00

Gah. Converting his texture to png was the first thing I did, forgot to mention it as I was in a hurry.
Still believe the geometry issues are real, though perhaps shapeways mesh medic manages to fix
them automatically during upload.

Re: missing texture for color printing?

stonysmith — 2013-06-18T14:38:14-00:00

I thought the texture formats had to be JPG or PNG.
You might try converting the TIF to JPG and update the url appropriately, then try the upload again.

Re: Segments of a wheel rim are disappearing - what to do?

Pico — 2013-06-18T11:28:16-00:00

Thanks for your informative comments; I'll work on this today. Pico

Re: missing texture for color printing?

mkroeker — 2013-06-18T09:33:24-00:00

Also, the imageTexture node takes single quotes around the double-quoted file argument,

which probably caused the original upload problem.

Re: missing texture for color printing?

mkroeker — 2013-06-18T08:48:05-00:00

Use netfabb studio basic to run a standard repair - as is, netfabb reports pretty extreme size&location for your model and does not recognize
any closed hulls.

Re: Segments of a wheel rim are disappearing - what to do?

stonysmith — 2013-06-18T05:32:21-00:00

Sorry for the confusion here.. When you look at it in Netfabb, the yellow lines are actually HOLES - it is telling you that you are MISSING a face at that spot (not that you have an extra one)

If you use the Netfabb option to "Close all Holes", it will attempt to close those holes.

The other trouble is that you have many, many segments of the circles turned inside out.. When in Netfabb repair mode, everything that is inside-out is a red color. You can attempt to use the option "Repair Flipped Triangles", but I didn't have a lot of luck with it on your file. It is these red segments that are being removed when you upload it. The red coloring says that the object has a negative volume.

I would go back to Sketchup and try re-exporting. The model is being exported as hundreds of separate peices, and it really would be better if it was a single peice (single shell). Did you happen to use the "ungroup" option in Sketchup? (you shouldn't have)

I seem to remember something in another forum posting about some setting in Sketchup that affects whether the peices are exported as a single peice or not, but I can't (yet) find that posting.

Re: missing texture for color printing?

darkczar — 2013-06-18T05:02:22-00:00

Also, I extracted the .zip - and the .x3d and .tif are sitting there next to each other as happy as two peas in a pod.

missing texture for color printing?

darkczar — 2013-06-18T04:58:01-00:00

Hi,

I'm trying to upload a model with color for printing. I've created the model in Maya. I exported it as an .obj. It has the file texture applied. I import it into Meshlab, and the colors are there. I zip the resulting .x3d file from Meshlab and the texture file (.tif) together and upload. It gets kicked back saying it can't find the texture. I'm choosing face color when I export the .x3d file. I took a look at the top of the .x3d file in notepad, and the texture seems to be at the root, as it were:

Can somebody help? I'm uploading the file, just in case...

thanks,

JP

Re: Preventing Rejections

stop4stuff — 2013-06-17T19:06:58-00:00

with you there Roy, previously printed models with small walls now rejected due to someone's arbitary interpretaion of 'the rules' = sucks for us trying to explain to CS that the model has been printed already without any reported issues....

Maybe I'll sign in again next month if there's been any changes to Shapeways policy of arrogance.

Paul

Re: Preventing Rejections

Roy_Stevens — 2013-06-17T18:43:55-00:00

Yep. If I want to put mullions into a window through a wall they need to be three times the thickness of the wall. Oh, and they have to be 0.8mm in all three dimensions. I had some L-braces that worked for a while by being 0.8mm on each leg with 0.3mm walls, then they started rejecting them by measuring them from arbitrary points inside the corner.

Re: Logo didn't show up

Youknowwho4eva — 2013-06-17T17:34:27-00:00

That's odd, What material did you print it in? Can you share a picture? Are the C and H attached to the rest of the model?

You can always email service and they can figure out why it happened, and at least if it's a fault on our side send you a new one.

Logo didn't show up

c3carpentry — 2013-06-17T17:22:49-00:00

I had a logo ( a "C" and an "H" that showed up fine when I uploaded it to Shapeways, but did not print when I got the item back. I don't think it was below the minimum thickness. At least not when I measured it in Sketchup. Curious if someone could tell me what I did wrong.

Let me know if you need more info.

Thank you

Chris

http://shpws.me/nQIT

Re: Can we somehow get pre-order confirmation of object printability?

barkingdigger — 2013-06-17T16:16:04-00:00

Hi - as an occasional designer here at SW, can I make a suggestion?

I've seen it stated in several threads that SW cannot be expected to perform detailed manual checks of everything that gets uploaded until it gets ordered for print. This is fair enough, but leaves us potentially offering goods for sale that cannot be made - embarrassing for the designer and for SW. Since the cost of every print is a mix of Postage, "Handling Fee", and printing price (per cm3) it stands to reason that SW has already set an amount within the cm3 cost to account for these manual checks. (It'd be fairly naiive if they didn't!) Why not add an extra "purchase" option for us designers that lets us order a manual check of our models in the same way we can currently buy finished prints? (eg - we click "order a check" instead of "order" on the model page) The rest of the existing purchase & payment routine can still be used, with "0" for the Handling & P&P fees inserted, so it wouldn't require a major rewrite of the system...

This option would simply strip away the P&P and Handling fees, as well as the "printing" component of the cm3 fee, so it should be easy to calculate. And if SW is clever, a successful manual check purchased this way should set a flag on that model/material combo that says "no need to run further checks before printing" so it doesn't get examined each & every time it gets ordered - that way we eliminate the current nonsense of successful models suddenly getting failed because a new bit of "wetware" has got hold of it! Sounds like a win-win scenario to me.

Re: Segments of a wheel rim are disappearing - what to do?

Pico — 2013-06-17T14:41:48-00:00

Still having problems with this - I wasn't able to downloaded the plugins that I wanted so reworked the mesh but still having problems. Here's a pic of the item in Netfabb. How do I correct the yellow lines? Almost all of that rim in yellow disappears when I put it in Shapeways. Thanks, PElgin

Re: 2 colors without sandstone

Youknowwho4eva — 2013-06-17T12:57:56-00:00

You could do something in FUD or Transparent detail where you have a hollow area inside, with a small hole leading to the exterior or our software will remove it, but small enough for the support material not to drain. This would give you an effect similar to that of the etched glass board pictured.

Note: Last that I heard, having trapped material is allowed for FUD and Transparent detail.

Another note: this is using minimal material, in transparent detail it would cost almost $200. And would look something like this

Re: Preventing Rejections

matt_atknsn — 2013-06-17T12:48:11-00:00

matt_atknsn wrote on Fri, 03 May 2013 14:58

Wish they'd update the page http://www.shapeways.com/design-rules/frosted-detail (like with some explicit ones ex. 1:3 wire thickness:length ratio; or where should they start measuring them structures... unless I missed it somewhere)

Hmmm... seems they've taken down that particular page... quite alarming as it'll mean rejection for all my FUD-exclusive models... (0.8mm FUD wires seriously? )

Re: How to apply color to a model?

mkroeker — 2013-06-15T19:47:15-00:00

Export from SolidWorks to VRML2 format if you want to keep object colors that were applied in SolidWorks.
If you need more complex coloring (image textures mapped to your object), you will probably have to add it
using some other program such as Blender. Colors should be visible in the static preview on Shapeways if
the upload worked correctly.

Re: Can we somehow get pre-order confirmation of object printability?

Mhagan — 2013-06-15T14:56:15-00:00

The 'on upload' check is just verifying that the part is manifold and is of a format that our printers can understand. The final printability checks are somewhat labor intensive and it is not practical to do them at upload at this time(sorry we understand that this would be a totally awesome thing and the software team are working furiously on a better way to do it) There is hope though! We are conducting testing on a program that will increase the speed at which we notify you of problems much faster after your order (a few hours instead of a day or more)

Re: Model Complexity

Mhagan — 2013-06-15T14:32:24-00:00

JeremyMallin wrote on Thu, 13 June 2013 17:35

Does actual polygon count affect printing time for any of the machines? Or are envelope and volume the only important factors? Just curious. I saw a web video somewhere that suggested "model complexity", rather than scale or density alone, was a factor in print time.

Polygon count alone doesn't affect print speed in the machines we use here at Shapeways. In the Strong and Flexible family of materials; a part with greater surface area will take longer to print by a small amount as the laser scans a bit slower around the outside perimeter than is does when sintering the material in the interior. This effect is very small though and affects the print speed much less than added volume. In all of the other materials, the surface area and polygon count are almost irrelevant to print speed.

Re: 2 colors without sandstone

AmLachDesigns — 2013-06-15T13:10:54-00:00

First off it will be quite expensive for a board of any size.

Second, you could print it in one piece but use different textures for the different coloured squares. The board in the picture looks like it is made of glass that has been etched, for example.

Re: 2 colors without sandstone

mkroeker — 2013-06-15T10:32:59-00:00

If you do not want to paint (or otherwise post-process) the material, the only obvious choice is to construct it in two (or more) parts that can be snap-fit or glued together.

2 colors without sandstone

Ahmet — 2013-06-15T07:46:44-00:00

Hello I saw this the other day:
http://www.shapeways.com/model/195224/typographical-chess-se t.html?li=category-games-headerimg
Now I wondered how is it possible to use a single material to get more than one color. (THE board)
Can someone please explain, because I'm planning on making a checker board.

Re: Segments of a wheel rim are disappearing - what to do?

Pico — 2013-06-14T22:39:13-00:00

I am going to download a plugin for Sketchup called cleanup which should eliminate the duplicate faces. Pico