
Trimble 3D Warehouse.
Whilst team TCT were away in Brussels at the Materialise World Conference, we got a first hand look at some of the latest innovations coming out of the additive manufacturing thought leader’s 25th anniversary event (Catch up on the blog here).
One of those was the first public demonstration of a technology initiative the company has been working on with Trimble. The preview showed how the 3D printing process can be streamlined with new cloud services developed by Materialise to improve the accessibility and printability of 3D models available in Trimble’s 3D Warehouse.
Materialise’s cloud services, which are already being used to run the company’s own IdeasWorthMaking.com platform which launched last year to drive meaningful applications in desktop 3D printing, use decades of experience in developing high-end software to provide powerful tools for 3D printing in the cloud.
SketchUp, the world’s most popular 3D modelling and design software, is currently used by more than 30 million designers around the world. 3D Warehouse is a core component to SketchUp’s 3D modelling and design platform and contains over 2.7 million models, delivering nearly 4 million downloads to over 700 thousand visitors each week. Through this collaboration, Materialise’s new cloud services will power 3D Warehouse’s Printables feature, generating high-quality STL files utilising technology that is capable of analysing and fixing models to ensure printability.
Mike Tadros, Product Manager for 3D Warehouse, commented: “The belief that design tools should be as simple and intuitive as possible is deeply rooted in the philosophy behind SketchUp. Trimble’s collaboration with Materialise is aimed at eliminating the most common pitfalls and annoyances related to 3D printing workflows. There are a number exciting possibilities that can surely arise from our users being able to share and reliably access print-ready files directly from 3D Warehouse.”
“For the past 25 years, we at Materialise have been developing software to empower useful applications of 3D printing, both medical and industrial, and help users of 3D Printers to get the most out of their machines,” explained Stefaan Motte, Director of the Software for Additive Manufacturing unit at Materialise. Through this collaboration, which links our new cloud service to 3D Warehouse, our goal is to now deliver an enhanced user experience to a much broader 3D printing community as well. My hope is that the Printables feature enables this community of designers, artists, makers, and more, to focus even more on the design and creation of meaningful 3D printing applications, while leaving the question of “Will it print?” to our software.”
Materialise and 3D Warehouse are currently testing the new features in beta, with a full launch planned in the near future.