GrabCAD Blog

Great news! GrabCAD Workbench is free.

| By Rob Stevens

Today we’re happy to announce that GrabCAD Workbench is now free for all users. Beginning immediately (that means right now), engineering teams of all sizes can share and manage CAD files effortlessly.

workbench-logo

Why have we returned to the free model? Simple. We’d like for everyone everywhere to use Workbench. Here’s Hardi:

Our goal with this change is to reach more people. Returning to the free model of Workbench will increase the speed of adoption and support uninhibited product design collaboration. We are excited to supply every engineer with a free solution that enables rapid iteration on design concepts, mobile access to designs, and generally increases the speed and quality of the design process.

Nothing is changing about the product (other than the price tag).  All the features you love - from desktop sync to file locking to easy markups - are still there.  And in case you were wondering about the future, we're still committed to Workbench as the tool of choice for CAD collaboration.  Stay tuned for future enhancements!

You can register for free at www.grabcad.com/workbench.

About the author: (Rob Stevens)

Rob Stevens

A former MechE turned marketing guy, Rob has worked for a string of successful startups. Before joining GrabCAD as VP of Sales and Marketing Rob led sales and marketing for Backupify, the leading provider of cloud-based backup for SaaS services. Prior to Backupify he spent almost seven years at robotics manufacturer Kiva Systems in a variety of roles including VP Sales, VP Business Development and VP Strategy. Before joining Kiva Rob worked at FreeMarkets, Inc., the leading provider of global supply management technology and services, and McKinsey & Company, an international strategy consulting firm. Rob holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University and a MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

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  • Definitely going to share this around the world!
    Workbench is something everyone needs!!

    • …passed the news along to three clients already!

  • Peter Anderson

    Shared.

  • Hector Becerra

    Wow, awesome.

  • Chris

    for how long?

    • Rob Stevens

      There’s no plan to change back to paid.

  • Wow. This is great. I am in the middle of the free 14-day trial, too. I once worked for one of the major PLM giants as a technical leader and this is great stuff. This is huge!

  • Alex

    This sounds really great! …where is the catch? Or what is your gain with this approach? Are you planning on switching back to payed version once everyone is on board? Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see this becoming a community project.

    • Rob Stevens

      Hi Alex –

      We’re not planning to make money from Workbench. As you may know, GrabCAD was acquired by Stratasys last year, and since then our mission has changed. Now that we’re part of a larger company we’re focused on reaching more engineers to build awareness and engagement.

      Really, no catch!

      • furius

        this sounds really good … and also so strange to believe … maybe will this bring some drawback to existing pro users? (I’m not one of them though) … for example this will probably create a big number of users and data to manage and probably some feature will become slower (I uploaded more then one hour ago a new SolidWorks assembly and it’s taking so long to be ready in the 3D viewer …) …

  • Dan

    This sounds great, what is the longer term plan for pricing?

    • Rob Stevens

      Dan-

      As I mentioned above, we don’t plan to make money from Workbench. We’re part of a larger company now and have a different role to play.

  • Paul Rob

    Is there going to be a cap on uploaded data? The old free version only allowed 1GB of storage.
    Does this mean that everyone gets the former Enterprise features for free as well?

    • Rob Stevens

      Paul-

      There’s no cap on uploaded data. We’re not offering the full set of Enterprise features, though. It’s basically the Pro plan with unlimited storage.

  • My CAD data is private, right? Are activities in the projects being collected for a study?

    • Rob Stevens

      Carlos, your data is private – you can see our exact terms in our terms of service at http://www.grabcad.com/terms. We are not doing anything nefarious or surprising with the data.