We are stunned by the quality and diversity found in the thousands of models uploaded to GrabCAD from around the world each week. Here’s a look at a few of the coolest recent additions, in our humble opinion.
MQ-9 Reaper RC model by GrabCAD engineer Jeff Earnest
BMW M20 Engine Head by GrabCAD engineer Vlad
It is unfortunate to bring up one very important topic that is caused by a fraction of GrabCAD users, yet concerns many.
Matt Lombard from Dezignstuff pointed us to an issue that GrabCAD engineers are uploading models to GrabCAD that are not created by themselves.
Here is where we stand.
We do not support activity where engineers are taking credit for models originally created by other people. We started GrabCAD with very limited resources to help engineers to do their own work more efficiently and providing an environment to share knowledge that would save time and effort for many others. We are building and developing the service on the basis of good will and are expecting all engineers to use it with the same principle. Unfortunately there is always a fraction of people who abuse the good will of others and damage the ground where we all stand.
Open environment. Our goal is to give engineers a solution that they can use without strict controls. We believe that like many technology and science areas, engineering should be more open, the industry profit from the global knowledge and know-how of the world’s engineers and encourage community collaboration. We also believe in engineers’ professionalism, hence have no short term plans to start checking all uploaded models manually before allowing them to publish the content to the whole community. Doing that would be contrary to our approach and contradict the values we believe in. However, we can set guidelines – not publishing and giving credits to users uploading other peoples’ models is something we think is the right thing to do.
All the above mentioned (plus, the feedback we are receiving every now and then) has made us to take the following action:
We are also working on finding solutions how engineers could share content that they have improved or worked on, yet do not own themselves and how to extract that from the profile view, yet be made available as useful content for others.
Again, the main reason why we are developing GrabCAD is to help engineers to do their work better. There are tens of thousands of students that are using these models and Q&A for learning and are benefiting from more experienced engineers’ knowledge and experience. We believe it is a good thing that they can learn faster and get inspiration from other great engineers like Matt Lombard.
There are engineers who have uploaded their own models so that big automotive, aviation companies have found their profiles on GrabCAD and have hired those engineers to work for them. The skills and experience reflected in the quality of the models have generated a lot of interest in industry companies. Hence, the integrity and credibility of everyone’s own work is more and more important to all parties involved. It is a great way for potential partners and employers to find talent, and on the other hand, it is a great way for engineers to show their abilities. All in all, if those models in the talented engineers’ portfolios would not have been theirs, they would not be working for those companies today.
Regards,
Hardi
grabcad.com/hardi.meybaum
GrabCAD challenge enables industrial furniture designer Sovella to quickly attract 101 submissions from our brilliant engineers! Below we showcase the winning designs which earned the engineers almost $4,000
Sovella has been designing and manufacturing configurable and modular industrial furniture since 1876. They needed a table-height adjustment mechanism with a 400mm range and a maximum weight capacity of 500kg, and they needed it quick. Sovella posted a challenge on GrabCAD and our amazing community of engineers nailed the project! Sovella representative Erkki Kiviniemi was impressed with the vast number of entries and with the new ideas and concepts generated. Without further ado, here are the winners (with Erkki’s comments):
First Prize (2000 USD): Sovella Concept #1 by GrabCAD engineer Chris Duncan
According to Sovella: “Our existing structure is easy to modify according to this idea. Idea to improve crank adjustability and the “storage” position of the crank is good. Duncan has sent many other proposals and he has made also good calculations from needed using power.”
Second Prize (1000 USD): Sovella Concept #2 by GrabCAD engineer Tomek F
We’re obsessed with creating the most fluid and easy to navigate website to support our thriving community of engineers. We’re thrilled to share our new layout with you! We took a moment to speak with our designer, Mikk Olli about the changes and about our vision for the future of GrabCAD.
Our new face! Take a look at the new header.
What are the changes and why’d we make them?
This is your big chance to optimize bicycle crank and win supercool folding bike by Tern Bicycles!
The Challenge, should you accept it, is to optimize the existing crank of bicycle to reduce the weight but still maintaining the strength as well as nice design features. Tern is currently using Kinetix Supra crank set which does the job but is too heavy. Durability and manufacturability are also important aspects after weight.
The Challenge ends 1st of February and the winner will get a cool prize of Verge Duo, a foldable bicycle of 21st century. The Challenge specifications, rules and details can be found here. Please note that this time only private CAD models will participate in the contest.
Tern is dedicated to the goal of sustainable transportation. It designs and manufactures bicycles for urban transport with a focus on portability and utility. Rather than trying to maximize speed, team Tern is focused on safety, comfort, convenience, and portability. Significantly, every Tern bicycle is highly portable, folding to integrate seamlessly with mass transit systems and crowded urban spaces. But beyond that, team Tern has focused its energies on building bikes that work great unfolded — with the philosophy that if it doesn’t ride well, it doesn’t matter how well it folds because no one will want to ride it. Tern donates at least 1% of net profits every year to social and environmental causes.
The ones who have paid close attention can see there is no longer a Services tab. For those who did not notice before, we offered a service where we found the right engineer for your project by posting a job description to GrabCAD feed.
Although we have done more than 150 projects with this model, we have also noticed that there are a lot of recruiters and people who want to hire an engineer directly. They browse engineers’ portfolios, see their rankings, download and analyze their models and view their participation in Q/A. After they have found an engineer that interests them, customers contact them directly.
This is perfectly fine with us and instead of blocking this model, we want to embrace it. The main goal for GrabCAD is to be there for engineers and to build an open environment. In order to keep better tools for engineers to express themselves, we are closing our Project Management model and are directing all customers toward the community and engineers’ portfolios.
So if you are an engineer looking for additional work, make sure you have your profile filled out and some projects uploaded.
You can read some additional tips on how to get work here.
We believe this is a step for a better and more open future in engineering. We would love to hear your thoughts and comments.
Regards,
Hardi
grabcad.com/hardi.meybaum
GrabCAD wants to share knowledge and eliminate the barriers inherent in engineering! We have a solution. We’re giving you the opportunity to make and upload video tutorials on how to use cool features on Solidworks! If contributing to a totally open network of engineers isn’t enough incentive, if your submission is rated one of the top 10 most “It Worked” videos, you will receive $50 USD!
You can upload your short tutorials in search of prize money, or you can upload knowing that you’re contributing to the thousands of engineers who will learn neat tricks and skills from the tutorials your post! We’re super excited to see the results of this competition! Here’s an example 2:25 long video from GrabCAD engineer Marcus (feel free to use sound if you want though!):
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