Most know some version of the 4 types of customer in marketing, but only a few figure out 3/4 classes of sales are not worth the effort.
1. The miser: No matter the cost, the right retail price is $0. These folks make up 82% of the market, but are usually effectively irrelevant in terms of revenue. Yet if you sell low-end low-margin products, than these are your customers.
2. The technical: Give them a list of specifications, and leave them alone. These people already know what you have for sale, and probably know the product better than most of your team. Too bad, these folks are <3% of the market, and while they have opinions they also don't matter in terms of revenue.
3. The sadist: These people are only interested in making people miserable, and for whatever reason are always a liability to have around even in the rare event they buy something. At <5% of the market they are also irrelevant in terms of revenue, but will incur additional losses though nasty cons etc. Your best bet is to give them free swag bribes, and refer them to a competitor because they are so awesome.
4. The emotional: These people are the highest profit market, as they are more concerned with how they feel about a product or brand. They don't care much about hardware performance specifications, but rather focus on the use-case in a social context.
One may disagree, but study 23000 users buying habits... the same pattern emerges for just about every product or service. Note, these classes are only weakly correlated with income level.
Thus, depending on the business it is absolutely possible to ignore the vast majority of the market while still making the same or greater profit. Yet if a product is mostly BS, than the online communities will figure that out sooner or later. =3
The artifacts are usually beautiful from good Workmanship Standards, Design For Manufacturability, and systematic Metrology. Dragging us all into the future one project at a time.
Note that training an ML model with such data would be pointless, as statistical saliency forms a paradox with consumer product design compromises. Note, there are _always_ tradeoffs in every problem domain.
Be honest, most Software people find utility in artifacts which are a mysterious black box with an emulated abstraction.
During a career role most have no idea "why" chips were designed and built a certain way, nor require this information to work within abstract domains.
In many ways, vibe-coders are the absurd optimization of a naive trajectory toward zero workmanship standards. =3
OpenSCAD is great if you follow a subtractive workflow. Define simple stock geometry, and subtract away each feature with slightly wider primitives to avoid zero thickness intersections. This ensures you will not get weird bugs later, and a fairly accurate part for plastic printers.
As many correctly pointed out, STL & DXF are not considered professional file-formats anymore by some people. Some fabricators will not respond to quote requests, as without a Step file they are literately self-confessed useless clowns without Onshape/Fusion true solids handling the ugly math.
It is partially a unofficial standards issue, but customers without Step files may have to look around for fabricators. YMMV =3
STL is not used outside of 3d printing for obvious reasons.
STLs have an obvious quality problem with geometry since they have an internal resolution that cannot be changed. The amount of people printing STL artifacts into their plastic parts is kind of ridiculous, honestly speaking.
The other problem is that CNC machines turn the geometry encoded by STEP files into toolpaths. This is basically impossible with meshes unless you want to mill the STL artifacts right into your part with a generic tool.
In subtractive manufacturing the manufacturer has to choose a selection of tools and assign each tool to the relevant features of the part. If you want holes you need a drill, if you want threads you need a tap, if you want fillets or chamfers, there is a tool for that and so on.
Your STL file is the equivalent of a JPEG here. It has already lost the critical information that is needed to manufacture your part.
The STL file literally means Stereolithography, and was created by 3D Systems. It is the intended use-case, and is limited like any other file format.
The fact many fabs avoid DXF is unit and format version ambiguity. However, the other reason is predicting bend deduction is often wishful thinking. Most high end CAD packages are fairly good at handling that mess for people, but often still have issues figuring out how features will deform.
CAD can also start to fail on large complex geometries, as even a simple single combo-tool g-code macro to drill, helical mill, and chamfer threaded-holes in a plate often is done by the time CAD/CAM path-planners finish/crash.
That is a fact.. LGPL can unintentionally contaminate the code base, and why https://wxwidgets.org/ had to have a more open license to cross-port programs from/to other platforms (especially Android and windows often needed Static builds just for practical reasons.)
Additionally, a public-domain/CC0 license can run up against some organizations policies. It is better to release under several licenses to reach as many users as possible. Personally prefer Apache 2.0, as 10 years from now someones situation may need that...
Sad a grief'er decided to bury your response. Happy holidays =3
1. The miser: No matter the cost, the right retail price is $0. These folks make up 82% of the market, but are usually effectively irrelevant in terms of revenue. Yet if you sell low-end low-margin products, than these are your customers.
2. The technical: Give them a list of specifications, and leave them alone. These people already know what you have for sale, and probably know the product better than most of your team. Too bad, these folks are <3% of the market, and while they have opinions they also don't matter in terms of revenue.
3. The sadist: These people are only interested in making people miserable, and for whatever reason are always a liability to have around even in the rare event they buy something. At <5% of the market they are also irrelevant in terms of revenue, but will incur additional losses though nasty cons etc. Your best bet is to give them free swag bribes, and refer them to a competitor because they are so awesome.
4. The emotional: These people are the highest profit market, as they are more concerned with how they feel about a product or brand. They don't care much about hardware performance specifications, but rather focus on the use-case in a social context.
One may disagree, but study 23000 users buying habits... the same pattern emerges for just about every product or service. Note, these classes are only weakly correlated with income level.
Thus, depending on the business it is absolutely possible to ignore the vast majority of the market while still making the same or greater profit. Yet if a product is mostly BS, than the online communities will figure that out sooner or later. =3
reply