Has it really been one month already? Feels like it was just yesterday when we excitedly pushed the first version of our free CAD library live. 30 minutes later it went down because of some unexpected (but very welcome) load issues. It's been a roller coaster ride after that. Big "Thank you!" to all our contributors, commenters and followers to our blog, Twitter and Facebook group.
Just three examples with some of the best work in our library.
How have we done since the launch?
We're getting close to 500 registered users which might not sound a lot but considering that we're not building yet another sexy iPhone app, but rather targeting a tight group of CAD engineers. We believe it's a good result. First partner university has started using GrabCAD for their course work which is a great direction for us. We're adding more features over the next few weeks and then take a crack at a whole new section of GrabCAD that will offer more incentives for engineers to sign up and will bring lots more real business to our site. Also, we're launching Engineer Spotlight shortly to get more exposure to our top contributors.
All in all, team is pumped about the future and we certainly have more ideas than we can manage to turn into pixels and code.
There are certainly areas where we need to step up our game - build better community tools to foster talking to each other, supporting collaboration and generally explain the whole "open source CAD library" idea better to existing and future members.
Secondly, we've got some great coverage on the internet but feel that only a very small part of the engineering community knows about us. Help spread the word :) Speaking of coverage, here's a nice explanation from engineering.com:
Call it a semi social web site if you will, but their members donate native files of parts that are free to download. Like a repository for different file formats that could save you time and effort from having to model them yourself. This will grow dramatically I am sure.
Kudos again to everyone who have already joined us and if you have any great ideas how to spread the word and help us build the community then get in touch. Leave a comment here, for example.
Oh, and Hardi Meybaum, our CEO, is planning a US roadshow from October to December. Interested in meeting him? Drop us a line at info@grabcad.com.
Still with me? Go and check out the awesome CAD models our members have uploaded. Over and out.
