TinkerCAD reopens, purchased by AutoDesk

http://blog.tinkercad.com/2013/05/18/autodesk_tinkercad/

by iancarroll • 13 years ago

41 24 13 years ago

blog.tinkercad.com

kaib10• 13 years ago

I'm Kai, one of the founders of Tinkercad. If anyone has questions I'm happy to answer here.

nraynaud• 13 years ago

It seems like tinkercad.com is dead, I am wrong?

kaib10• 13 years ago

We did a quick deploy to fix one account class that hadn't been moved to the new free plan. The site is back up again.

Edit: The site was down for 3 min and 32 s.

iancarroll2• 13 years ago

Is AutoCAD going to offer a way to print to TinkerCAD?

kaib10• 13 years ago

Are you talking about exporting model data or doing 3D printing from within AutoCAD?

chubot• 13 years ago

What's happening to Airstone? Is the team now back working on Tinkercad instead?

kaib10• 13 years ago

This was a pure asset deal, no personnel moved to Autodesk. The team will continue working full time on Airstone.

davyjones• 13 years ago

I don't have any questions per se but I was genuinely sorry when I heard TinkerCAD was shutting down. Very glad to know you guys have revived the project.

kaib10• 13 years ago

Thanks! We are very happy with the outcome as well.

bhouston• 13 years ago

Any word on the price of the assets in terms of figures?

kaib10• 13 years ago

Deal terms were not disclosed. That said Airstone is planning to fund development using the acquired funds.

dirtyaura2• 13 years ago

Congrats Kai and team.

Interested to know how this happened. Did you shopped Tinkercad before closing it down and Autocad approached only after shutdown?

kaib10• 13 years ago

The short answer is no, we only started selling the assets three weeks ago, a few months after announcing the shutdown.

The longer answer is that selling part of your business while continuing in a business that is in any way related is usually very challenging from a legal standpoint. The lawyers call it the "spaghetti effect", basically the IP tends to be really tangled. We had serendipitous developments a few weeks back in how Airstone is built which let us create a hermetic barrier between the Airstone and Tinkercad IP's. Before that happened we had no way of selling the IP without taking an unacceptable risk.

neovive• 13 years ago

This is wonderful news! TinkerCAD fits perfectly as a bridge into AutoDesk's 123D family of modeling applications. I wouldn't be surprised to see TinkerCAD integrated with 123D Design in the future. It's also a great way to introduce younger audiences to the AutoDesk brand as a long-term bridge to 3D Max and Maya.

GRMA• 13 years ago

What an unexpected outcome! Wow!

marcamillion• 13 years ago

Wow....the sheer joy from the commenters is quite telling.

I don't think I have ever seen that sort of reaction for an acquisition of any web property before - except maybe YouTube going to Google and not MSFT.

TinkerCAD reopens, purchased by AutoDesk

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