Price system

Hey,

I made a hollow cube with size 10*10*10 cm. First, I made a cube with a thickness of 2 mm, which costs circa 120 euro.
Secondly, I made a cube with surfaces without a thickness.
This cube was much more expensive. Also, some materials that were the cheapest with the first cube were the most expensive with the second cube. My questions are:
What happens if I make an order with a design with surfaces without a thickness.
How comes that sometimes a material is very expensive, sometimes very cheap?
Why is the second cube way more expensive?

Thank you very much for reading

Hi michiel,

Welcome to Shapeways!

All of the materials offered by Shapeways are priced by the volume of material used with the exception of Ceramic which is priced per square cm of surface area. (your 2nd cube would be cheaper in ceramic) - a full list of materials is on the comparison table here; https://www.shapeways.com/materials/material-options

Your second cube 'without thickness' is probably a 10cm solid cube i.e. has a thickness of 10cm - check the volume of the model on the model page in edit mode, its probably 1000cc

Also WSF has a volume (of material used) to bounding box discount of 50% after the first 20cc - see; https://www.shapeways.com/materials/white_strong_flexible

Paul

Thank you very much!
I'm sorry I named the topic random prices, which suggests that shapeways has random prices.
The cube was indeed 1000 cm3. So if a suface has no thickness, for example of a cube, the cube won't be hollow but solid. Is this a mechanism from shapeways or from sketch up?

Yep, you got it, as long as the surfaces enclose a complete shape it will be solid, this is a Shapeways MeshMedic software mechansm.

To make your 10x10x10 cube hollow, you'd need to put another, smaller cube inside and then connect the two 'shells' with a tunnel so that the inside space is connected to the outside world.