Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Man I'm having a great day.

Man my day is going just fantastic.

Shapeways apparently changed the limit on bounding box size from being by object to being by shell. this means that though the total object (IE entire stl) is above the limit a single shell or part in that object is not and thus failing.  

<<<Begin Rant>>>
So I resolved the error of thickness on many of my models and come to find out a new bounding box rule has been put in place making some of my smaller objects mess up.

Sigh.

You know what shapeways, I'm starting to feel like an abused girlfriend.

You want me to make objects conform to all your rules. Fine tell me the rules when they fucking change.  Or when things are added. Just email me when you change your design rules page. is that so hard to ask. or maybe have a changes notice when I log in.

Or maybe. and this is a bit of a radical suggestion here.  Maybe you should have the upload tool check for things like Minimum bounding box size.  Cause see I believe things like wall thickness are hard to check. But bounding box size is not. its something video games on my iphone can check without straining the processor.

I just repaired these files and uploaded them and it didn't error then. If your size check would have just checked this I wouldn't have to be embarrassed yet again when dealing with my very pleasant customers.

They've been very nice and patient while I fix things.  I've been frustrated and melancholy about problems with files I thought I was done with.  But they have been polite and understanding.

Don't get me wrong shapeway's, your support team has been nice and all. Always so keen to tell me what I've done wrong. But that again is sort of the abuse of it all. Its all my fault. Its all my mistake.  Nothing you could have done would have fixed this.  No notice sent out would be helpful, no I have to obsess over design rules I thought I learned every time someone orders a model I made a year ago.

Rules like this minimum bounding box and the ever changing wire rules. the lack of clarity on what's detail vs wall rules.  And even the constant wall thickness lottery are symptoms of the same abusive relationship.  You don't know how and when to talk to me.

See I'm getting married so I've been thinking a lot about relationships.  My soon to be wife and I love each other.  Spending time with eachother isn't' a chore its a joy.  We have different interests but we share and enjoy that we are each different.

Now shapeways, I like you a lot.  We share this great hobby of making digital objects become physical but really all there is between us is the physical.  I have spent countless hours trying to make things perfect for you but you're never satisfied.  You just keep raising the bar. over and over again.  If its not what you wanted you could have told me to make some changes when you're demands changed.  But no I have to be blind sided with things. And there are my friends who just want to by some miniatures caught in the middle.  So I have to scramble and redo the whole damned thing to satisfy you. If I don't someone's feelings will be hurt.

And lets not talk about the pricing. Everytime I have to fix stuff for you the price seems to go up. Things get blown a little bit bigger each time and what happens? You get to charge a teeny tiny bit more.  My friends pay the consequences of you not telling me what I need to do.

It just gets old shapeways. you have to tell me things before an issue arises.  Not when things go bad but before they fall apart.  All I want you to do is talk to me.  Is that so much to ask.

Oh yeah and I want you to call fucking Netfabb and have them build you a proper design rules check algorythim for me to test things with before upload.  Fuck.


<<<End Rant>>>

After some consideration I will begin backing up my STL files from shapeways with the intent of removing them from the service.  The goal being to pull everything down and fix it before returning it to sale.  This will be time consuming, frustrating, and will likely mean many products are never returned to shapeways.  but it also won't happen while I'm doing a wedding so it will likely start in February or march.  sigh.