Tinkercad is back — and it’s even better.
Autodesk announced today they’ve signed a deal to acquire Tinkercad and revive the popular web-based 3D design tool and its growing community of makers and educators.
Tinkercad shut down in March to the disappointment of many makers who appreciate its simplicity and ease of use for creating 3D models in the cloud. New accounts were frozen, and old accounts were to be phased out. In its place, Tinkercad morphed into Airstone, a 3D software company geared to the professional engineer.
But as of 1pm today, Tinkercad is back in business and reopened to new accounts that will be even more robust than before.
Free accounts will now have access to store unlimited numbers of models, and to import 3D meshes in STL format and 2D files in SVG format for editing within Tinkercad. Freeloaders will even have access to shape-scripting tools for generating 3D models parametrically. These options were previously available only to paid accounts.
Tinkercad will continue to support 3D printing integration with Shapeways, i.Materialise, Sculpteo, and Ponoko.
“We are excited to have reached an agreement with Autodesk that will provide a solid home and bright future for Tinkercad,” said Tinkercad founder Kai Backman, currently CEO of Airstone Labs.
“We’re as excited as Kai and his team,” said Mary Hope McQuiston, marketing director for Autodesk’s consumer group. “Tinkercad is a natural extension of Autodesk’s 123D suite, our consumer 3D design portfolio, and our desire to make 3D design accessible to everyone.” Eventually Tinkercad will connect into the 123D line, she said.
Tinkercad uses a supercomputer-scale 3D modeling kernel to provide its innovative browser-based 3D CAD tool. Backman and his team will continue to develop supercomputer 3D modeling at Airstone providing real-time 3D design and physics simulations for product designers and engineers.
Backman previously indicated that their cloud-based system was a key component of Airstone and couldn’t be opened up for a third party to take over Tinkercad. But that’s changed too, he told me.
“When Airstone started working on its cloud-based supercomputer there wasn’t an option to sell the Tinkercad service due to restrictions around how the source code was organized. The Airstone engineering team eventually managed to remove these restrictions, making an asset transfer to Autodesk possible. Autodesk has purchased all the core technology required to operate Tinkercad,” Backman said.
The deal is to close within 30 days. So are Kai and his crew out shopping for new Tesla roadsters? “We are planning to invest heavily into Airstone and building our supercomputing as a service platform,” Backman says. Fair enough.
Come check out Autodesk at Maker Faire Bay Area today and tomorrow in Expo Hall!
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