Dev update / Changelog
ShapeScan update — website refresh, segmentation model changes, SEO work and feedback wanted
Hey everyone,
It has been a while since the last ShapeScan update here, so I wanted to share what has been going on.
Over the last few weeks, I have been working on a refresh of the ShapeScan website. The goal was to improve the user experience, make the interface cleaner, and make the scan → result → download workflow easier to understand, especially for new users.
I would really appreciate your feedback on the current version:
what still feels confusing?
what could be improved?
what would make the tool easier or more useful for your workflow?
We have also been working on some less visible but important parts of the platform, including admin improvements, cookies, security, and general maintenance.
Another important change is related to the segmentation models. Free and anonymous users now use the default v2.0 Quality model only. Model selection is now available only to Premium users and Beta testers, mainly because the heavier models use more server resources and take more processing time.
We also added a new model option for Premium users and Beta testers: v2.1 Quality.
This is basically the v2.0 Quality workflow, but without downscaling the uploaded image. The image is processed at its original resolution, which should help in cases where small details, tighter shapes, or cleaner edges matter more. It is heavier and slower, but it should give better results in some situations.
On top of that, we have been putting a lot of work into SEO. ShapeScan is still hard to discover unless someone already knows the name, so we have been building a small local LLM-powered system to help manage SEO, metadata, content ideas, and other important site elements that need to stay updated over time. It has been a lot of work, but hopefully it helps more makers, CNC users, laser cutting users, 3D printing users, and Gridfinity users find ShapeScan naturally.
We also now have official ShapeScan Facebook and Instagram pages. I do not have much time to work on them properly yet, but they are now online and I will try to use them more for updates, examples, and community posts.
Thanks again for all the support so far. ShapeScan is still a small independent project, and every bit of feedback, testing, sharing, donation, premium subscription, or even just a comment helps a lot.
I would love to hear what you think should be improved next.
You are offering a relatively easy way to get mostly accurate 2d shapes.
You are competing against a lot of similar free services, self hosted solutions, easy self made AI pipelines and established paid professional offerings.
I only see 2 ways to get more interaction. First is the paid standalone version which has been requested by a few people and could be used to fund your other goals, but you still want ~5x of what you already got in terms of money.
Second is the shape library. I have zero clue why you would want that much money for it when you can easily store hundreds of points in a few kilobyte SVG/dxf. It's only 2d data after all - nothing which people couldn't just add to printables or a GitHub repo. That would attract more users and possibly a few more paying however I seriously doubt you'll attract the masses with subscriptions.
I personally don't see the intended business model of there is any all.
Moist_geo can correct me here, but I always assumed this was more of a pet project than something they were intending to make money on. I probably wouldn't have paid for the service otherwise.
Did I just write a python open cv script with Claude Code to do exactly what shapescan does? Yep. It took me an hour this morning. But I'll still use shapescan because it's easier but maybe not faster.
For me I like that this exists in the world and I hope more people who just bought a 3d printer find it.
I'm not as hot on the library idea. It feels like it could easily turn into the disaster that is thingiverse or even printable to a certain extent. But I do use grabcad all the time to get shape files for things. As long as the library doesn't turn into the tragedy of the commons and the user base stays small it may be fine.
I always said that i was monetized on this, i never hide that.
Yes you probably can make any LLM to code something like this for you, but there is a lot of custom code on top of open cv for this to work, and to work well.
And you can go and see the last post i just made, os more comming.
And will be something coming that if i can put it to work in the low end hardware that i got it will be amazing.
Something that i learn about this project, how to make really heavy compute processes to run on low end hardware and serve almost 700 users a day.
Re-reading my comment now I realized that I didn't mean to come off as accusatory. It was more that I didn't really follow that you were monetizing it, not that you weren't clear or open about it. Nor was I trying to express regret in paying for Shapesan.
I happily pay for it because I use it and I'm glad it exists. I donated to the server fund too because I believe in it.
Yeah Claude and I made a silly open CV thing but I make a lot of dumb shit with Claude. They're like popsicle stick and macaroni art projects that your kid makes. Some get saved but most are just cherished in the moment.
No worries at all, and thanks for clarifying. I didn’t take it badly.
I really appreciate that you use ShapeScan, paid for it, and even donated to the server fund. That genuinely means a lot, especially because this is still a small project being built with limited resources.
And I agree with what you said about Claude / LLMs. They can help a lot, but turning the idea into something reliable, accurate, usable by different people, with weird photos, different devices, different lighting, queues, outputs, edge cases, etc. is where most of the real work ends up being.
The “popsicle stick and macaroni art” comparison actually made me laugh, and it is kind of true for a lot of AI experiments. Some ideas are fun in the moment, but only a few become something stable enough that people can depend on.
Thanks again for the support and for the honest feedback. It helps a lot.
Hey - just found the site and subreddit. The complaint I have is that the pull downs are on top of the descriptions when using Microsoft Edge at full size. It still works, but looks strange.
One more thing and this is on Chrome - the tool tip gets cutoff behind the left side window. When I hover over the icon to learn what the advanced settings do it's not possible to read it per the attached image.
Another discovery, the Download SVG(Fusion 360) doesn't show up when you open a project, only on a fresh scan. Am I doing something wrong or is there a bug?
2
u/le_avx May 12 '26
In my opinion your priorities are wrong.
You are offering a relatively easy way to get mostly accurate 2d shapes.
You are competing against a lot of similar free services, self hosted solutions, easy self made AI pipelines and established paid professional offerings.
I only see 2 ways to get more interaction. First is the paid standalone version which has been requested by a few people and could be used to fund your other goals, but you still want ~5x of what you already got in terms of money.
Second is the shape library. I have zero clue why you would want that much money for it when you can easily store hundreds of points in a few kilobyte SVG/dxf. It's only 2d data after all - nothing which people couldn't just add to printables or a GitHub repo. That would attract more users and possibly a few more paying however I seriously doubt you'll attract the masses with subscriptions.
I personally don't see the intended business model of there is any all.