Estonian-founded and Massachusetts-based open engineering platform GrabCAD has passed the 1,000,000 member mark.
GrabCAD is an open engineering platform that allows engineers and non-engineers to collaborate and edit 2D and 3D CAD (computer aided design) models online.
The company was founded in Estonia in 2009 by two young Estonian mechanical engineers, Hardi Meybaum (CEO) and Indrek Narusk, who noticed problems within their industry. No good library of CAD parts and assemblies existed, it was difficult to find talent and it wasn’t easy to work with other engineers. Thus Meybaum and Narusk established GrabCAD with the core belief that by embracing new internet-based technologies, they could radically transform a stagnant and old-fashioned industry. They envisioned new forms of collaboration and openness to help mechanical engineers around the world save time and stay organised.
At first, the company existed as a marketplace to connect engineers with CAD-related jobs. GrabCAD then evolved into a community for engineers to share CAD models and moved its headquarters to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2011, to take advantage of the local tech startup scene in the US. Although its headquarters is now in the US, GrabCAD retains development offices in Estonia, as well as in the UK.
As well as attracting a million community users, it has now about 300,000 open source models on its platform.
