But I don't believe that the incentive structures that drive Magics' development are optimal for the industrialization of additive manufacturing, either. Again, this isn't Materialise's fault, and nor is it ipso facto bad. The core issue is that independent designers like myself are seen as customers, while Magics' development is driven by client relationships. But as someone coming in from the outside, the result feels schizophrenic. This kind of path is ubiquitous around the world of industrial software, and Materialise is, to be fair, ultimately at the whim of its (enormous) industrial stakeholders. Every additional feature (while I'm sure they're all valuable) makes the entire application more difficult and clunky to use, and it often feels like Materialise has given two different customers two distinct ways of doing the same thing - simply because each one demanded that the workflow fit their way of working. On the other hand, by relying heavily on key accounts to drive the product's development, Materialise gives up much in the way of product vision - accepting, instead, a steady stream of feature creep. Through these relationships (and through their own internal parts business), Materialise can get an up close view of what their biggest users need out of the software, and prioritize their efforts accordingly. They also collaborate closely with many of the large manufacturers (both OEMs and service bureaus) who build 3D print parts on the machines that Magics supports. Materialise has close relationships with a number of industrial 3D printing machine manufacturers (notably Renishaw, SLM, and EOS, all of whom have agreements in place to allow Materialise access to their machines' build parameters, and develop build processors to work natively on those machines). In many ways its functionality probably benefits as a result.
MATERIALIZE MAGICS SOFTWARE
I believe Magics to be a classic example of a piece of industrial software whose development has been driven by customers who are large, powerful, and often have divergent interests. In order to simplify the descriptions below, here's a key to the part's features: I've already had one of these parts EBM printed by Addaero, and expect to have versions of it printed in both EBM and laser metal powder bed fusion (which I'll refer to as "DMLS" throughout this post) in the near future. Note: Throughout this post, I'll be showing screenshots of my titanium seatpost part. So, I signed myself up for a 30 day demo and got working :) $250k+) 3D printers. But I feel very strongly that without some knowledge of how it works, independent designers will be doomed to creating inefficient, difficult to manufacture designs. It's generally NOT purchased by people who don't themselves own industrial (i.e. I'll post more thoughts on the overall process chain later, but for now I wanted to work through some of the observations I've had in my first encounters with Magics.įor background: The cost of this software is in the neighborhood of $20,000. This month I'm doing a deep evaluation of Materialise Magics 19 and SG+, and trying to understand both the major features of the software and the philosophical perspective that Materialise views additive manufacturing through.
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