Great lamenting and gnashing of teeth ensued in March when Tinkercad announced it would be discontinuing its web-based 3-D modeling tool to focus its energies on Airstone, an interactive simulation environment. But on Saturday at Maker Faire, CAD software powerhouse Autodesk announced it is purchasing Tinkercad and reinstating the service. The move comes in time to prevent shutdown of any accounts or services, and users can start creating new accounts immediately.
Not all details are final yet, and Autodesk hasn't disclosed the expected sum, but the move should bring some of the Tinkercad users into the Autodesk family.
"We have, in the consumer group here at Autodesk, really been focused on making 3D design accessible to everyone," says Mary Hope McQuinston, director of marketing and partnerships at Autodesk. "So it is a fabulous and natural extension to our efforts in that category, particularly for our 123D product line."
Tinkercad positioned itself as a low-cost, DIY alternative to CAD programs that historically held high barriers to entry, in terms of both price and skill.
"It's a simple paradigm," says Kai Backman, Tinkercad's founder. "It's surprisingly powerful, you can actually build very complex designs -- we've had people build houses, architectural pieces, etc. with it. But it's also a paradigm that's really extremely easy to learn for somebody who hasn't done 3-D design before."
This is a market Autodesk has been approaching in the last year or two through 123D, building touch-screen design apps for mobiles devices and giving them away for free. Tinkercad is still more basic than these 123D apps, and Autodesk thinks it'll attract new users who could migrate to 123D products as they need greater functionality. But McQuinston also says Autodesk will grow the options for Tinkercad's free version, including unlimited designs, support for imports and exports, and more powerful shaping tools.
"For me, personally, it was a huge victory to see the product actually continue and not to have to pull the plug and leave all those users high and dry," says Backman. "There were a lot of poeple that had a hard time finding a replacement."
Meanwhile, Backman and his team will be ceding their involvement to Autodesk engineers, and continuing to focus on Airstone.
