Searching Shapeways

[Warren D]

Does anyone have any tricks for searching Shapeways?  If I search their site for 1/25 Autocar trucks, I get 7000+ hits which include all different scales and at least 6500+ items that have nothing (not a word!) in common with the search request.

[Wudwrkr]

I gave up on that outfit for that very reason. I refuse to do business with a company that has a site as screwed up as that one

[Casey]

Go to Miniatures --> Vehicles, then enter "Autocar" into the searchbox:

https://www.shapeways.com/marketplace/miniatures/vehicles?type=product&q=autocar

It seems likely to me there just aren't many thing specifically labeled as "Autocar" by the seller/designer.

Are you looking for something specific for an Autocar?

Edited January 11, 2018 by Casey

[Warren D]

Yes and no, I like to search for a specific thing and it gets frustrating when the search engine just dumps everything.  Evil-Bay is bad enough, but at least you get the relevant stuff first.  Shapeways has relevant items buried hundreds of items in.  Seems like I have to scroll thru 1000's of items on the chance I may hit one thing I'm looking for.

[Casey]

After going through the first few pages where you'll see lots of relevant results, you start to see...no more, so you know that's all there is.

eBay's search function is very good, and if you use quotation marks for the specific words you're searching for, the minus symbol to exclude keywords you don't wants hits from, etc., you can search very efficiently in my daily experience. If you're searching for Autocar items, use...:

"autocar" -only, -mack, -1/87, -palmer       

...as your search keywords and you won't get anything with ONLY, Mack, 1/87, nor Palmer listed in the title. Also, if you're the Buy It Now type, set the search for "Newly listed". If you like Auction style listings, use "Ending soonest". I think the "Best match" is eBay's default search based upon your eBay and web searching habits. Use the price range and location search function to narrow things down, too.

[Spex84]

For Shapeways, I honestly have better luck just using Google, sometimes Google Image Search, to find items. 

For instance, searching for the items I sell myself, I can find them using Shapways search if I know exactly what I'm searching for...but if I don't put in the exact title of the product, I have to do some digging to get there. In contrast, if I plug the same search terms into Google, they pop up immediately. That might be because my Google experience has been streamlined by their algorithms to find the things I typically search for...so your mileage may vary!

[Russell C]

11 hours ago, Spex84 said:

For Shapeways, I honestly have better luck just using Google, sometimes Google Image Search, to find items. ..........

Been a while since I looked in there, but what I do is start with this kind of Google search  https://www.google.com/search?q=site:shapeways.com+"427+cobra"  -- click on the link there to see what the page looks like -- with the words between quote marks, but then I always choose the "Images" option since it's just more fun to look at pics. Other stuff may come up not related to what I want, but that stuff is usually interesting. For those who haven't done image searches that way, you click on the photo you like, and it will give you the option of "Visiting" the page where the image is found.