Printed models by our community

Hi all,

In the home page, there is section called "printed models by our community" which contains the images of the latest models that have been uploaded.

Unfortunately, very often, these images are only computer generated, and do not imply that the model has ever been printed.

That's a pity because for someone who wants to purchase an object, knowing that it has already been printed (well, already sucessfully been printed) is very important.

I suggest adding a check box when uploading an image to specify whether the image is computer generated or a picture of the actual printed object. It should not been very complex to do and if everybdy is a little bit disciplined, it could work...

More generally, I think it would be valuable to add a tag (or something) specifying whether an object has already been sucessfully printed and can be ordered safely. But I understand that this can be more complex...

What do you think ?

Hi Magic,

Thanks for the feedback!

Yes it would be ideal if we could show actual photographs of printed models. Some users upload pictures after printing and some don't. It has our attention.

I like your idea of tagging or classifying uploaded photographs. Let me forward that internally.

Cheers!

Robert

Hi guys,

I agree that it would be beneficial to:
1) See more photographs of printed models, and
2) use flags to be able to quickly determine which models have been printed successfully.

A fairly quick and simple (perhaps temporary) solution for (2) would be to have the community agree on a 'keyword' to use in the tags section of their models to say "this model has a 'successfully printed' photograph attached". That would allow users to search the gallery by keyword to browse only those models that have been successfully printed.

Here are a couple ideas that could help with (1):
(Now, I'm not saying this is necessarily a *good* idea, just a possibility).
Shapeways could offer a service to model owners for which the Shapeways staff would take a photo (or photos) of a model before it got shipped out to the person who purchased it. (Again, just a possibility.)

Another idea would be to add a check box, available to model owners, that would "allow buyers to upload photos of this model".



~David

Hi David,

I try add in the description the mention "NOT PRINTED YET" or "SUCCESSFULLY PRINTED" for my items (I confess I do not do it each time), and I think having a convention for the tags would be a good idea (actually, when I was speaking about a "tag" in my first post, I was meaning a new special field, but we can in effect use the regular tags for that, as you suggested).
I also try to indicated in the description of a picture if it is a "CGI rendering" or a "picture of the actual printed object".

We do not need any new development for that, we just need to agree on the naming convention (for tags and perhaps name - or beginning of the name - for the picture description), be as numerous as possible to follow these rules and then of course be disciplined .

So my question is: are there any other persons that are ready to follow this kind of rules if one day they exist?
(or should we do a poll for that?)