Interesting news coming out of this year’s Congress on the Future of Engineering Software (COFES) event regarding startup Lagoa, a cloud-based provider of rendering technology. The company’s VP of marketing, Chris Williams, shared with a handful of press folks that the company was in the process of developing a 3D mechanical CAD program based on the Parasolid kernel.
The Lagoa 3D modeler will be ready for release sometime by the end of this year and will compete with SolidWorks (ironic since Lagoa was a big hit among attendees at this year’s SolidWorks World where it was nominated for a Best of Show award).
The cloud-based Lagoa modeler will work through a standard web browser, so no installation is required on the part of the user. It will be able to be used on mobile devices, making it highly portable. The CAD model will reside in the cloud and users will be able to share it with others using a hyperlink.
As with any cloud app, the advantage is accessibility. The 3D CAD model would be available anywhere by anyone with access to the Internet, unchaining the model from a specific user’s computer. Two users will be able to see and interact with the same assembly regardless of their location. Moving a part around will update the same part on the other viewer’s screen.
Pricing has yet to be determined, but because of its cloud deployment, it will most likely be offered on a monthly subscription basis, just as Lagoa’s rendering products. According to the company’s president, Thiago Costa, a former game developer, the goal of the Lagoa modeler is to create a CAD product that is easy enough for a casual, non-CAD user to use. Perhaps the company’s goal is to attract those wanna-be inventors who want to 3D print out their models.
Check out Roopinder Tara’s post on the announcement and his conversation with Costa. Worth a read.
