When I first started 3D design and printing in 2017 Shapeways was the only 3D printing service I’d heard of that could print highly detailed parts on demand in various materials at an affordable price. The only other option was to buy a filament 3D printer to print parts. At the time Shapeways had higher resolution materials available than filament printers had available.
I had heard of a few other modelers who used Shapeways. Jack Burgess, famous for his Yosemite Valley layout, was one of the early adopters of Shapeways printing service. I followed Jack’s lead and started using Shapeways for 3D printing.
Shapeways had some nice tools to check uploaded .stl files for a closed mesh and general printability by checking the design against their minimum and maximum dimensions for printing.
One problem with Shapeways is that it’s fairly expensive. This prohibits submitting many multiple iterations to test design features while working on a design. It’s just too expensive. You have to be certain that the design is close to what you want before having Shapeways print it.
The Shapeways printing process makes any parts they print very true to the dimensions designed with minimal warping. Once I started doing my own printing using a resin printer I found that there were too many variables like supports, choice of resin, exposure time, and print orientation that caused parts to warp.
With Shapeways printing surfaces that were supposed to be printed smooth and visible had to be oriented so the visible side was face up. Even then some lines were still visible on surfaces that should be smooth. The lines could be filled and made smoother by cleaning and priming the parts with a filling primer.