I am happy to announce that we have just signed a deal where Autodesk will purchase the Tinkercad site and core technologies. This is a great day for all Tinkercad users, Autodesk is a very enthusiastic and capable steward. There are two main impacts of this deal: the site is fully operational and Autodesk has some very exciting plans for Tinkercad.
The shutdown plan has been rolled back and effective immediately new users are again able to sign up for the site. Even better, at the request of Autodesk, we have supercharged the free plan. You can now create unlimited designs, all import and export functionality is enabled and ShapeScripts are turned on for free accounts. We have automatically upgraded all existing free accounts to this new powerful plan. This account will be offered for a limited time only so make sure you sign up as soon as possible.
Before signing the deal the we spent a lot of time talking to Autodesk engineers and product people about their vision for Tinkercad. We were impressed by the deep insight the Autodesk team had into the Tinkercad interface and the underlying technology. There is also a strong alignment on topics like furthering education and the vision of making design more accessible. But most of all we are very excited about the roadmap Autodesk has drafted for Tinkercad.
As our team continues working on Airstone I’m pleased to see Tinkercad find a safe and welcoming home. I can speak for everyone when I say that we are looking forward to using Tinkercad for a long time to come.
Yours sincerely,
Kai Backman
Founder & CEO
Hallelujah!!! This is fantastic news for so many of us! Thank you!
The pleasure is all mine. I’m personally very very happy about this outcome. Thank you for all your support!
Congrats Kai!
Oh, thank god, I really only use Tinkercad due to its simplicity, and was thrilled when it came back. If there were only one thing I could do, it would be Tinkercad.
Thank goodness this is such a happy result! I am so happy for you guys and so grateful that this service can continue. Without Tinkercad, my makerbot essentially was idle. Great work, well deserved!
Fantastic my students and I no longer in Tinkercad withdrawal. It was hard to explain why you were going away. Party time tech lab @BurkesSchool
I’m really happy about this outcome as well. On a personal level there was a lot of people who grieved the loss of Tinkercad a lot.
This is the best news, Kai! Woooohooo!
This is great news! I had only signed up about week prior when the “bad news” was announced; I started to look into alternatives (and managed to find a couple), but none of them was as easy and quick to learn as Tinkercad. I’m glad to hear it is back; seeing how quick and easy it was to come up with my own designs made me seriously think about purchasing a 3D printer. Easy-to-use design software is the one part that was missing, and Tinkercad was and is the final piece.
This is fantastic. Question though. I do not see any way to un-suspend my account. How is that done?
Joseph, please get in touch with team@tinkercad.com to resolve this.
Oh my, oh my what happy news I just received in my mail inbox. I have visited this blog several times with what I thought was idle hope. My teary eyes are now glistening with joy :}. Thank you autodesk and thank you tinkercad for the effort and giving me the 3D starter tools. Soon I will have my second expo with my 3D jewellery design all because of tinkercad.
It was heartwarming to read your note. Much luck with your second expo!
Yay! I was considering giving up 3D printing, because TinkerCAD is that good.
Thank you for working this deal.
Thank goodness! Great job all around!
I can’t tell you how happy I am about this! Tinkercad is such a wonderful way for my kids to get into 3d modeling and seeing their work printed out on our printer. It’s also my go-to app for creating quick and simple designs for testing, etc. Thanks for keeping us in mind!
Wow! This makes me really happy. I have been learning Blender but for rapid prototyping I have yet to find something as slick as Tinkercad.
This is fantastic news. Thank you Tinkercad and Autodesk for preserving this great program! I am so happy I could jump around in my office right now. Wait, hold on… jumping now… hooray!
One question: now that the free plan is supercharged, what is the benefit of being on the paid plan? I can’t seem to find a breakdown of that on the website yet – and I’m wondering if I should continue to pay monthly or if I should drop down to the free plan.
Sorry, I now see the paid accounts are on a three-month grace period. Question retracted. Back to jumping around! Thank you again
Happy jumping Laura! We are all very excited about this.
Best news I heard today!!!
Quick question, it says I’m running under a legacy account. Does that mean I have all the cool features?
Thank you,
-Rami
Yes! The legacy account has been upgraded, you have all the new features at your disposal. The display name will change in the next few days.
Sweet! When I found out Tinkercad was going down I started learning other tools. Got into blender, Freecad and Heekscad. They’re all missing that alignment tool!
Just as I thought I would have found the perfect little program to do my 3D modelling, you disappeared. Now I have a second chance to discover what everyone else that has saying about this wonderful program. Thank you for coming back!
Thank you for keeping Tinkercad alive! I was so upset when you originally announced that the site was shutting down. Now I can tell my friends to go to Tinkercad.com again!
Great News indeed! In the past I have been on the paid plan, but I suspended my account while trying to learn other 3D software. Now I would like to re-activate my plan and go back to work. How do I re-activate?
David, please email team@tinkercad.com with information on what email you used for the account.
HOOORAH! Such great news.
Question. I have a “legacy” plan. Will this also translate to the supercharged free plan? Or is it more limited? Thanks again!
Yes, legacy plans have automatically converted to the new supercharged plan. The display name will change in the next few days but the transition is effective right now.
Super happy with this, I have a paid account and have been testing other alternatives but none have been as good or easy as tinkercad!
It’s my Birthday today so I feel like this is an awesome present for me.
Happy Birthday Mark! It was all just for you.
Superb news!
This is great, I was playing with a few other sites that had some more sophisticated shape building, but weren’t nearly as easy to use as tinkercad
So glad this is saved. For Heritage accounts (mine) I assume we are to be treated as the free accounts as well?
Yes, your account has been auto upgraded to the supercharged free account.
Great news – now I can let all the teachers and students I’ve been working with that we can get back to Tinkercad….it looks like the academic plans are functioning like the free accounts. I also spent time exploring other options and demoing them for teachers/students, but always felt they fell short of Tinkercad’s intuitiveness. Thanks to everyone who worked to bring this back.
This is absolutely fantastic news. I’ve tried dozens of other pieces of design software since Tinkercad shut down and nothing has been as simple. Hooray! I’ll also have to submit my request to have my account unsuspended.
I can’t thank you guys enough for pushing past the “no way possible” barrier to find a new home for Tinkercad. Way to go Kai and team!
My students are going to be soooooooooooooooooooooo pleased! I’m posting a note to them on Edmodo as we speak!
This is great but what about us paid members who have stuck with you through thick and thin? You are now giving away free what we are still paying for. Will we be elevated to a place of honor amongst the mob or left to twist in the wind?
I’m a paid member and really could not care less that what I’ve been willing to pay for is being offered for free for others – that doesn’t change my willingness to pay if that’s what’s needed. I’m grateful that the service/program will continue and others will have an opportunity to get into easy-to-use 3D CAD. I’m sure the business model will be tweaked along the way to make it work.
Great news and as always the devil we be in the detail – interested to use and explore
Congratulations! – Tinkercad is an amazingly powerful tool – mind-blowing at times – I am so grateful that this awesome project has a future. Well done guys!
Such a great news! Thank you Autodesk for saving this cool thing! TinkerCAD has been the only possibility to heal your meshes and prepare them for 3D printing, I’ve been so sad what it has been shut down. Raise the flag of tinkering high!:)
Read your email just before going to sleep. Best news I’ve heard in a long time, hoping Autodesk will play nicely with this fantastic community and product.
The Autodesk team taking over Tinkercad is super excited about both the community and product. I’m very optimistic myself.
Thank you, Thank you have been fighting with Sketchup since Tinkercad says it was closing. Now I can now sleep at night!
Most excellent news! Thank you, sirs!
Hopefully this will eventually add to the bottom line for ADSK investors as well.
I obviously have only a single data point but my impression is that Autodesk is a pretty sophisticated buyer. In addition to getting the Tinkercad product they also now have all the rights to the Gen6 geometry kernel. The impact of Tinkercad is obvious, it sits very well with the work of the consumer group. The impact of Gen6 is more subtle. Of all the big CAD vendors Autodesk is now the only one that owns a production tested supercomputer class geometry modeling kernel. If you are familiar with how CAD tools operate you know how critical ownership of a kernel is.
Reblogged this on PF Hyper the Blog and commented:
Will certainly be trying this out soon. Thank you Autodesk!
AWESOME!!
This does raise a question or two – I thought TickerCAD technology was a vital part of Airstone? Will you still own this technology? Also, I’m not a paying member myself, but what about the paying TickerCAD members, will their subscriptions become free as well?
Very good questions. I’ll answer the first as it’s easier. All paying plans are on a 3 month grace period due to the transition. Autodesk hasn’t announced anything further, I’m sure one of their top priorities is talking to all the paying customers to work out a good way forward.
The technology question requires a somewhat subtle answer. Autodesk purchased all Tinkercad assets including the revolutionary Gen6 geometry kernel. When we initially announced the shutdown the source code was organized such that a separation of Airstone and Gen6 looked nearly impossible. A few weeks ago we had a serendipitous breakthrough in how Airstone is built which cut this dependency. Once this happened the deal suddenly became possible.
Another question – your announcement states “This account will be offered for a limited time only so make sure you sign up as soon as possible” – do I have to do anything to make sure I keep these new services with my existing account or can I just carry on and enjoy it?
All the existing free account and the ones signing up during this period will be on the new supercharged free account. Just carry on.
Yeah. Now I can hope for better stability, a helix script, and numeric text input for dimensions – eventually. Very cool.
Tinkercad has always had numeric text input for dimensions, unless I’m misunderstanding your comment.
Set the ruler and there is numeric text input for dimensions. A helix tool would be v. useful though.
I was at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 yesterday. I didn’t stop by the Autodesk booth because I didn’t really have anything to I needed to discuss with them. I’ll be getting a RigidBot BIG near September time frame instead of the MakerBot 2X that I originally intended on buying. I read the email once I got back home after a 2.5 hr drive. The news almost made it difficult to sleep – but it was an exhausting day. I would have stopped by and gave them a big hug (jk) for saving this platform. I have been learning Bonzai3D and Cheetah3D since the previous announcement and it hasn’t been as pleasant of a learning experience as TinkerCad. So again – a great big thank you to all productive team members.
Thank you Rojer. Your support is appreciated as always. We are very happy with Tinkercad being able to continue.
This is the best news !!!!! Thank you and all of the effort you guys took to keep this alive and working … this is what keeping great software/effort/knowledge/ideas alive !!!!
Very very happy to hear this!
hi how can i purchase the software.
Paid plans are currently not open to new enrollment. There are certain accounting restrictions around the transition period and we need to wait with enrollment until Autodesk has taken over completely.
Hi Ricky, you don’t “purchase” TInkercad. It’s a “cloud-based” system that you operate in your web browser. Just go to Tinkercad.com and create an account.
this is a realy great message! Good luck!
I’m glad to hear the great news about TinkerCAD. I will also publish this news on my blog
Cant wait to start offering Tinkercad classes to out middle school kids !
I for one am very happy to see tinkercad continue.
It offers one of the easiest interfaces for 3D modeling around,
This is amazing for CAD software. Im part of an FTC robotics team and we are usually required to use PTC Creo for CAD software, however, in my physics class today my teacher wanted to learn to use our maker bot and so she made us use Tinkercad. Boy am I glad she did, this is thousands of times easier to use than Creo and is much more fun for the artistic side of CAD. The first day of use and I already feel very comfortable with the features of Tinkercad. I just wanted to thank all of those at Tinkercad for this amazing software.
i.materialise is really really happy with this announcement! It’s a great education tool and we’re sure many scholars and students will profit from it!