Tobias Mattsson has been one of GrabCAD’s most helpful engineers, answering questions, sharing reference models for competitions and rendering everything he happens to see. In short, legendary. We managed to have a nice long chat about Tobias's work and his thoughts and experiences with GrabCAD.
Tobias lives in Skövde, Sweden, working for Rejlers Ingenjörer AB as a Mechanical Consultant. After graduating in Media Education and working as a web designer, he decided to move on and become an Engineer. He bumped into GrabCAD when he was working with Volvo. “I was doing a presentation to show how we could redesign this room, and I needed CAD files of telephones, monitors and such." GrabCAD was a departure from traditional CAD libraries – it was a CAD community. Since then he’s been contributing when he can. “Its good when the whole world can come together like on Grabcad – it helps the engineering community a whole lot.” Tobias has been answering questions from Engineers from as far off as India, taking the time to explain the finer points of design and FEM.
We discussed the language barrier on GrabCAD; sometimes you need a degree in Engineering and speak English to participate fully.“It is a problem, but at the same time, you can’t put up a challenge in 30 different languages.” The most basic tool of communication on GrabCAD is CAD software - skills in at least one is essential. Tobias started with PRO-E then moved on to Inventor in his final year of University. In his first years as a consultant he picked up Solidworks and CATIA. “Nowdays i use Solidworks as my main software, as i think its the software that best suits me.”
Tobias’s “Ball Bot” was a winning design from our weekly 3D printing challenges with iMaterialise. Tobias passed on his finished 3D print to his kid for ‘product testing’. By all accounts, it's durable enough for a child. Tobias has moved on, developing a “Ninja Ball Bot”. We always imagined the Ninja Ball Bot as a lone 3D printed Ronin who resides in GrabCAD’s servers and often wanders with his partner Grabby the Bot to Thingiverse, Shapeways and its land of its forefathers, iMaterialise. 
In our conversations, we touched upon the number of directions design, crowdsourcing, 3D printing and GrabCAD could go. Incorporating natural forms into design were important to Tobias. 3D printing certainly makes that easier in many ways. He surprised me when he said that GrabCAD is still relatively unknown among his colleagues. “It has plenty of room to expand.” says Tobias. One suggestion to help GrabCAD was developing company profiles, a way in which they could connect with the greater community, their employees, their clients and promote their work. A worthwhile idea, Tobias! Its on our BIG to-do list.
