Road To Major Fud Improvements Starts With Repricing

Discussion in 'Official Announcements' started by Andrewsimonthomas, May 9, 2017.

  1. MitchellJetten
    MitchellJetten Shapeways Employee CS Team
    @ everyone else, please do "@" my name if I forgot to answer your comment or question :)
     
  2. czhunter
    czhunter Well-Known Member
    No it is misunderstanding.

    Currently it is.
    Now, the price (and model position) is shown as "cheapest option". Just because SW right now can't guarantee printing orientation, you are staying on the "safe side" (asking for cheapist possible price, while production cost with _real_ orientation can be actually higher)

    Once you make Orientation tool, that will guarantee the orientation, there will be no need for you to stay on the safe side (everyone can pay the real production costs ... with your margin, of course) - that will lead to even more precise pricing - but everytime higher then now.
    Probably with only small price differences on most models ... but we will be repricing once again.

    Or are you going to charge "cheapiest orientation" price like now even when you will guarantee orientation set by designer with different price?

    I know some bussiness - and I bet you don't.
     
  3. PenistoneRailwayWorks
    PenistoneRailwayWorks Well-Known Member
    Now this worries and annoys me slightly. One of the main driving forces for the price change is to ensure that we each pay for our own prints rather than some models subsidising the printing of others. Yet here we have an approach that is going to again result in some models subsidising others. Let me explain.

    Model A is uploaded and charged at the cheapest orientation. The designer leaves the orientation alone and orders the part. The engineer then examines the model and determines the best orientation is different to cheapest so re-orientates and prints the part.

    Model B is uploaded but the designer sets the orientation to give the best printing results and orders the part. The engineer prints the model.

    In the first case because it was automatically orientated for the cheapest option, Shapeways have to cover both the time for the engineer to determine the best orientation and the increase in support material (or z axis etc.). Neither of those costs are passed on to the person buying the part.

    In the second case the designer has made the orientation decision saving Shapeways time and has paid for the extra support wax.

    I'm likely to always fall into the second category as I now have a good idea of which way up my models should be printed to reliably get good prints, and I'm happy to pay for the extra support material necessary. What I'm not so happy about is subsidising the printing of Model A (the cost of the engineers time and the extra support material has to be paid for somehow)

    Also, if I did let you choose orientation, how would I know which orientation was actually used? If the part came back with orientation issues how would I know which one to set it to if I didn't know how it was printed?

    Personally I'm happy with the general idea of the price change to focus more on each person paying for their own prints, and I'm eager to have print orientation, but I think both approaches need to be consistent. In other words on upload the cheapest option should be determined as the default, and this should not be changed on a whim by the Shapeways engineer. That way we all know exactly which orientation is being used and we are all paying only for our own prints. Anything else is moving away from the focus on each person paying for their own prints and completely negates the point of this new price structure,

    Mark
     
    sbhunterca and RolandR like this.
  4. MitchellJetten
    MitchellJetten Shapeways Employee CS Team
    Ah my apologies for misunderstanding.

    We have no intention of changing the current process when we launch the orientation function.
    We'll continue printing models the way our engineers think is best if you don't force us an orientation with the new feature.
     
  5. MitchellJetten
    MitchellJetten Shapeways Employee CS Team
    Thanks for your feedback Mark.
    You definitely have valid points here and I'll bring them up with the repricing team and production team.

    With vehicles for example, the cheapest orientation would only be 10 cents cheaper than having the "best quality" orientation.
    So I don't think you'll be subsidizing them but I definitely do understand your point.

    The good news of course is that we've already made a big step by making sure you're not subsidizing those big wireframe models. :)
     
  6. dcyale
    dcyale Well-Known Member
    Like everyone else I have been looking at the price changes in my models. Almost all went down, some significantly. However I had done a test model I never printed just to see how much it would cost to do 1/87 scale windows, 240 of them: https://www.shapeways.com/product/V64USMYUZ/240-window-test. It went from $108 to $311!

    However, once I added a cage, and made it one part, it came down to $103. https://www.shapeways.com/product/YM24KWVU5/240-window-testb

    I can only guess the fun the tech would have had trying to track down and package 240 individual little windows on the old model, as opposed to them all staying together on the new.

    The next step is to figure out some spruing or cages on a few other models that went up- some that have actually sold in the past and took a big hit.

    We are using a new and changing technology. When it changes, we have to change. Redesign stinks, but Shapeways has to make money or we are all out of business, and you can bet if Shapeways ever went away, the competitor's prices would start creeping up.
     
  7. czhunter
    czhunter Well-Known Member
    For sure.

    But I'm talking about the situation when I DO force you orientation with new feature - once it will be possible, we will do it.
    Actually I'm writing about the same thing as PenistoneRailwayWorks, so no need to duplicate.
     
  8. 1068084_deleted
    1068084_deleted Active Member
    @MitchellJetten
    Some models of mine have still disappeared from the shop?
    What happened ?
    Is it also happening to others?
    These are missing:
    Deago Greeble set 1 "From the shop disappeared"
    Deago Greeble set 2 "From the shop disappeared"

    How can I keep them back exactly as they do in the shop?
    Thank you .
     
  9. MitchellJetten
    MitchellJetten Shapeways Employee CS Team
    Ohoh, that sounds bad!
    I'm looking into it right away.

    If you want them back right now before our dev team fixes the issue,
    Go to the edit product page and add another material (and remove it again), and click on the "eye" to enable FXD.
    This way your model is available again.

    Not sure what is going on yet, but we will make sure to get it fixed!
     
  10. gregor57
    gregor57 Member
    I had also missing models. I got on the editpage, there was written printability in the field of the material pricing. With a click on SAVE the model was back in my shop.

    Also i had to change several markups manually. There was strange numbers. e.g. modelprice7$, markup 121$. ;-)
     
  11. PenistoneRailwayWorks
    PenistoneRailwayWorks Well-Known Member
    Yes I had a couple of models with markup of around $80 when previously it had been around $5. I couldn't see any obvious patterns as to why those models and none of my others though,

    Mark
     
  12. Model_Monkey
    Model_Monkey Well-Known Member
    I noticed, like some of you, that products previously available in BHDA had markup problems. The markup for those was 0. Fixed those manually.
     
  13. ETS35
    ETS35 Well-Known Member
    @MitchellJetten

     
  14. 1068084_deleted
    1068084_deleted Active Member
    Many thanks for the reference.:cool:
    I did it and it worked.:)
    I also slowly get behind the secret of price changes.:confused:;)
    I think that the initial excitement is put back and everyone will be gone to go with it.:)
    Now I can only say that I hope everything goes smoothly.
     
  15. Andrewsimonthomas
    Andrewsimonthomas Well-Known Member
    @ETS35 "Also, are designers being punished by the machine space = footprint x max. height? I think it is unfair to use the highest point of a design as a multiplier for everything. As an example, I have several designs that are really low except for a few pieces (I'd say no more than 2-5% of the footprint)"

    The height is a huge driver for the cost of the print, even if its just a small part, that max height effects the whole build by making it take longer. By occupying that footprint of space we need to charge for it multiplied by the height as well

    Another way of looking at it is that if you have your highest point, the rest of that space around it is free to you to use :)
     
    coines23 likes this.
  16. Andrewsimonthomas
    Andrewsimonthomas Well-Known Member
    I can't make promises on a timeline at this point but keep an eye out for updates in coming weeks :)
     
  17. RolandR
    RolandR Member
    What would be the best way to print a model like this?

    l5-frame-flat.png

    For quality, height and probably also the amount of support material, printing it flat like this would be ideal.
    However, these were always printed standing on their side - Makes sense considering that most other parts are probably higher than that.

    Should I sprue them together in bunches like this?

    l5-frame-bunch.png

    There are some problems that the side pointing up has a different finish from the one resting on the tray, but it's not too bad.

    It should also be noted that I'll order enough of these that they'll probably fill an entire printing tray (on average, they're about 18x50mm, and I'll order about 200 of them).
    Would it be more efficient to print a whole batch of flat models (which would make me happy because of the better quality), or a few sprued packages (which would make the shapeways engineers happy, because it's less parts and more models per machine run)?

    Thanks!
     
  18. ETS35
    ETS35 Well-Known Member
    That doesn't make sense.... it would mean that if you guys get an order with a tall part, it will affect the costs of all other orders that are printed at the same time, despite their respective height. It would mean that even if 0,001% of an entire print is tall, it will increase the costs for all other parts. As I understand it, separate parts in the same design all have their own footprint x height, so different height per parts is not a problem there. Why is it a problem when a part has high and low parts?
    Why not have a calculation that specifically calculates machine space around the actual design? I'm just not getting it.

    I have no problem with having to pay for height, but I don't think this way of calculating it is fair. It means that once the height x footprint is set, you only pay for the material. So it suddenly means that the material is enough to pay for the extra time and costs.
     
  19. czhunter
    czhunter Well-Known Member
    Was it your aim or not, that bigger single-piece models (like mine tram bodies in H0) or even some sets are much cheaper in HDA then in FUD/FXD?

    Now its not sure, which material is meant to be "better" or more exclusive.
    I know, these are different stories and can't by directly compared

    I thought that HDA is aimed on rather smaller high-detail models, but with new FUD pricing, HDA is obviously aimed on "as big as you can fit into bounding box" models - for sure for model trains.

    EDIT: aaaaaa ... changing prices under my hands!
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2017
  20. reducedAircraftFactory
    reducedAircraftFactory Well-Known Member
    Here is some real data. I'm just one moderate-size shop owner, but here is a graph of the zero-markup price change for the aeroplane models I make available in FUD/FXD:

    [​IMG]
    The crossover point is clearly not in the middle and there is less volume on the left side (price decreases) than the right (price increases). I attribute that to my modeling strategy for small-scale (e.g. 1:285) models in FUD, which probably represents 2/3's of the models on this graph. Since the old start price (handling fee) was high ($5?) and the per-price cost was zero, it made sense for me to include 2-4 non-sprued scale models in a product. My choices were to give a customer a single model for $7 or (say) four of them for $12, so it was a much better value for the customer to "multi-pack". (No, I wasn't doing 50-100 part products!)

    The pricing now -- which probably matches Shapeways' costs better -- pushes me toward 1-3 models in a product instead, since the handling fee is lower and the per-part cost is higher. And I can adapt to that, given time. Though anything I modify -- even just to decrease the part count -- is going to get the dreaded "First To Try" tag. :-(

    I will have to do something with the handful of models on the tails of this curve, which are dramatically more expensive or inexpensive.
     
    Derek66 likes this.