Newest Shapeways offering - Sorry Lou it's not yours

[Philip H]

http://www.shapeways.com/model/485806/#

[Catt]

Ahh, yeah, Stony's Railking.He did the Z scale version first.

[Philip H]

Indeed he did, and after seeing it painted up on Trainboard, I asked him to resize it for us N scalers.  I have one on order, and will post once I get it and paint & detail.

[kelticsylk]

If I understand the site correctly you can upload 3D drawings and they will make them for you. Is that correct?

I read an article a few years back on this kind of service (may even have been Shapeways) but the price was a lot higher.

This would mean there is a possibility I could actually make my virtual Baldwin models into N scale shells.

Frank Musick

[Philip H]

Frank,
you are correct, and we have a ton of folks around here who have done it or are doing it. Lou Judice does business at Shapeways as Round Mountain Models; one of the Mark's has a virtual store; Bryan Bussey of Eastern Seaboard Models started his White Tower Restaurant Project at Shapeways before moving it stateside.  Search on it here, and enjoy the intellectual feast.

[kelticsylk]

Frank,
you are correct, and we have a ton of folks around here who have done it or are doing it. Lou Judice does business at Shapeways as Round Mountain Models; one of the Mark's has a virtual store; Bryan Bussey of Eastern Seaboard Models started his White Tower Restaurant Project at Shapeways before moving it stateside.  Search on it here, and enjoy the intellectual feast.

I'll search...I've been working all day trying to get a Baldwin "babyface" into the format they need to try it. Haven't succeeded just yet, can't get a wateryight mesh. I use TrainSim Modeler to create the shapes, import it to 3D Canvas, export as a  Wavefront object and then import it into Meshlab to make repairs. I downloaded the newer Meshlab which solved some problems...Almost there.

Frank Musick

[ljudice]

Looks neat!!!! 

I love the entire concept behind Shapeways and I bet it will be a big part of the way we make models in the future. Right now, it's full of problems though, from long lead times to issues with how consistently a particular design is "rendered". But the idea is fantastic - and you can be sure it will develop further and faster than we can imagine.

I'm doing some European projects right now and I'm looking at Shapeways for some stone and concrete items, where the "aliasing" or layering on some parts would be less of an issue.

And I can tell you that use of Shapeways by European N-scalers far, far exceeds our usage - they are doing lots of stuff - locos, DMU's and EMU's and all sorts of MOW machines (mostly things that have no parallel here - since in Europe they don't use a lot of highrail trucks, but rather small dedicated rail vehicles.)

There is a guy in the Netherlands who works for one of the private companies that maintain track (in Europe most major MOW work is contracted out to private firms).  He's been given permission to use their CAD library and is starting to put together some models that look truly fantastic - and some of them are machines that are sold right here in the US.
I'll let you know if I come across something usable!

- Lou

[Ian MacMillan]

Lou,

Whats the URL to the Netherlands guys' stuff?

[ljudice]

Check it out:

http://forum.beneluxspoor.net/index.php?topic=20003.0


That thing is almost exactly like something I've seen on NS, BTW.

[ljudice]

Anyone interested in some of the stuff people are doing in Europe should check out the posts here - each one is a link to a project or group of projects.  A lot of them are vehicles:

http://forum.beneluxspoor.net/index.php/board,88.0.html

[DKS]

Stony's model is an interesting and appealing choice. I wonder, though, why he evidently scaled the model up from Z to N without readjusting the stovepipe handrails. I think they detract from what's otherwise a really nice model.

[Philip H]

my guess is he just reset the drawing scale as a down and dirty.  I ordered one (!) and its in production, so I'll post pics when it comes in.