Where OnSite/NextDay aims at the professional market, let’s say, the designers@work, i.materialise is focussing more on consumers, the designers_after_work who don’t have to be professional, don’t know much about materials and have a 3d model that they want in their hands for which they want to know quickly a price range to materialise the model for the possible materialising options.

Right now the difference between the 2 sites is not that obvious because the i.materialise site is still in beta with the basic features.
We have other projects in the pipeline for i.materialise that will make the difference more clear when they are released.

An example of an obvious difference between OnSite and i.materialise is that i.materialise is able to handle more file formats than the STL file analyzer in OnSite.
Leadtime is another one. OnSite gives exact shipment dates, i.materialise gives indications.

I hope these answers give already bit of a better view on i.materialise versus NextDay/OnSite.

WiM
(btw : nice to hear that the NextDay standalone application is still being remembered . The application is still downloadable in the download section of the OnSite website)

Next Day used to run via a standalone application (Communicator Next Day) then it switched to a web application via the Materialise Online service. I’m not entirely sure when this change happened. On my 5 year old laptop I have the software app. On my 1 year old desktop I couldn’t find the same app to download and had to run it all via the website using Internet Explorer (Onsite is not very browser friendly).

The standalone NextDay app was very effective as a STL viewer and so on but has to some extent been replaced by Mini Magics. What I’ve found though in the last 12-18 months is that the Onsite service is VERY fussy about the STL files. Many fail due to bad edges or whatever.

Via Online you only then get the option to have Materialise repair the file at extra cost.

Uploading the same “bad” STL files to iMaterialsie though still flags the errors but the iMaterialise repairs the file automatically.

Ironically, this is what the original NextDay software used to do when you uploaded a bad file – you had three levels of repair when you logged into the service and this sorted out 99% of issues.

So this, in itself is progress. Over the last couple of years Materialise have lost a lot of business from me due to the increasingly fussy STL analysis that just stopped the process dead in its tracks.

Compare this to other bureau where I am sending the same files and having no error issues reported (and looking at the STLs in other viewers I am seeing no errors either so I suspect the issues are with the analysis software at the Materialise end either picking up things that others don’t, or flagging up errors when there are none).

In any case, this alone makes the iMaterialise site worthwhile….and the prices are good as well

Thanks for your comment. I’ve updated the post since hearing back from Alex of i.materialise and one of his comments refers directly to the orientation issue. Personally I would prefer to have direct control over the way the part is oriented, even though I have no doubt the i.materialise support engineers are skilled and experienced. Having said that, it’s pretty easy to contact i.materialise directly (and if Alex’s response times are anything to go by the customer support will be fantastic), so I imagine it would be possible to give instructions, or orient the part in the CAD software and ask for it not to be changed.

I agree that i.materialise seems to be a way of presenting a rapid manufacturing service with an easy-to-use web interface. As such I’m not sure exactly how it will appeal to designers, many of whom will have experience of interacting directly with a supplier. But the interface seems pretty good to me, even in its beta state, and I could definitely see it getting business from those who wouldn’t normally have access to – or know how to get access to – a local supplier. The list of possible materials and technologies, and the ability to change material, surface finish etc and immediately see the price update, is something that I think could give confidence to someone who isn’t sure whether to go down the RM route or not.

Presumably they are attempting to leverage the Magics platform as a web service and plug in for 3D apps that are more consumer or non CAD focussed?