Last week I received a nice surprise: a box of chocolates that were made with the help of 3d printing. Life at the office seems to go that way here - there's always something amazing to see. Especially the combination of traditional arts and 3d printing is fascinating, as artists get access to a whole new range of possibilities (also check out our post on the work of Bashsheba Grossman for an example of that). Who knows what we'll see next week?

I'd almost forget we also do some real work too! Over the last two weeks, we've been working on the complete website redesign (almost there), preparing our new prices, and adding STL support (hurrah!). I've summarized our most important news for you below.

Have fun,

Bart Veldhuizen,

Community Manager Shapeways

Our new prices – how do they work?

Last Monday we stopped giving our pre-beta discount and introduced our new prices. We explain the details and and give some hints on cutting printing costs in a new blog post.

Blog post: Our new prices, how do they work?

STL Support Planning

From the forums and our survey (see below), one thing was clear: above anything else, you want STL support. I'm glad to announce that we now have a clear planning for our support of the STL file format: it will be available mid-June.

(Yeah, I dodged giving an exact date - I need to stay friends with our developers ;-)

Easier exporting to Shapeways with the new 'Supported Applications Overview' 

As you know, at the moment we accept files in X3D or Collada file format. From our first survey we learned that many people weren't sure how to get their 3D authoring tool to export those files, so we created the 'Supported Applications Overview'.

It'll tell you if your 3D authoring tool supports either of those formats, or if it needs an additional plugin.

We didn't include your app of choice? Send us a note and we'll add it!

To the 'Supported Applications Overview'

Contact us about adding another application to the list

Complete our survey, win $ 50

We like to know how you think we're doing (and we'll sweat to follow through on your feedback and suggestions!). To find out, we send out a survey to a random selection of our members every now and then. If you reply within 48 hours, you can win a $50 coupon for Shapeways. Last week we sent our first coupon to Ricera10 - congratulations!
 

Invite your friends

Do you like Shapeways? Invite your friends to join Shapeways too! If you need more invitations, just let us know.