Tinkercard
Tinkercad, the cloud based 3D modelling software, will cease to exist over the coming year, to allow the creators to concentrate on their new project Airstone Labs. The platform will finally close down in July 2014 after a phase of trimming down.
Tinkercad was a favourite of many newbies to 3D modelling and 3D printing, just last week we met a young man developing a board game on Tinkercad. By using preset customizable shapes as a starting point for 3D modelling Tinkercad opened up doors to those with little time to learn more complicated CAD software,
Those of you hoping that somebody may purchase Tinkercad and save it from extinction will be sorely disappointed to learn that the core of Tinkercad is a kernel called Gen6, that kernel, developed by founders Kai Backman and Mikko Mononen, is the basis of the new Airstone project and therefore opening this up would be very detrimental to the new San Francisco based business.
This new project Airstone is an interactive simulation environment and a statement on their new website reads as follows:
“Airstone Labs is a San Francisco-based startup developing a groundbreaking new simulation product aimed at the product design and engineering markets. The company is inviting early customers to contact us, to influence product direction and reserve their spot on the 2013 supercomputing-capacity roadmap.”
The closure announcement yesterday was met by an outpouring of grief by the twitterati:
@erinautomatic - shocked. a huge step backwards and a really sad day for the democratization of design and manufacturing. goodbye @tinkercad :(
@maxogden - tinkercad is shutting down :( making cad easy for beginners is something someone should continue doing
@iamkey - Truly gutted #tinkercad have decided to kill their fantastic learning tool.
Tinkercad’s CEO Kai Backman was keen to answer as many of the obituaries as humanly possible, see his twitter feed for all responses.
Though the closure of the site is sad, we’re sure it won’t be too long until we see another, Autodesk’s 123D series is already picking up were Tinkercad left off. So it is just left for us to say "Goodbye Tinkercad, it’s been fun!"
