One big issue that's preventing me from making things is that people generally aren't willing to share their drawing files or sources for the dimensions. I've used AutoCAD quite a bit and Shapeways will accept files drawn in AutoCAD. The problem is that there's a lack of info on drawings for the prototypes. There's a lot of N and HO scalers on Shapeways with great detail parts or entire shells, but they've all told me that they won't share their files or sources. This is understandable because Shapeways does give some money to users whenever someone buys a product they designed. And, since the files would have to be modified to rescale and modify them to fit O scale counterparts, no one is willing to do it themselves. This really frustrates me because I'm willing to sit and measure my models and change the drawing files to make these custom parts fit, but I have no way of getting accurate dimensions short of walking into a train yard and climbing on an engine to measure it myself.
Now, if there was a way to get blueprints for things like locomotive bodies, or people were more willing to help others instead of going only for money, we might be able to see some pretty incredible stuff coming from websites like Shapeways.
Trevor
