Shapr3D Is Released with Cloud-based Multiple Platform Support

Innovative MCAD company from Hungary races ahead with seamless device transition and AR.

Seamlessly move from tablet to workstation and vice versa. Yes, it also works on a smartphone. (Picture courtesy of Shapr3D.)

Seamlessly move from tablet to workstation and vice versa. You
can also view Shapr3D models on a smartphone with the new Webviewer. (Picture courtesy of Shapr3D.)

Shapr3D for Windows had its official launch yesterday and unveiled more reasons why it should be considered the next MCAD revolution. The Hungarian MCAD startup led by the determined István Csanády showed a design moving seamlessly between an iPad (the device Shapr3D started with), a laptop and a Windows workstation. Without pause for transfer. No USB drives were used. Whatever hardware the user was operating, there was the design exactly where they had left it.

Shapr3D for Windows had been in beta for 10 months. The iPad version has been usable for designers and engineers for years. Most important in what was announced are the increased capabilities—device independence
(called Multidevice), augmented reality (AR) integration, rendering and more—and in total, perhaps enough to put Shapr3D into a class by itself.

We had seen seamless transition between devices with Onshape, a full-cloud application. Shapr3D, on the other hand, manages a seamless transition when the models are stored locally. Shapr3D does this by keeping a “backup” on the cloud—a data bridge of sorts. Shapr3D continues to work locally, as it always has, like SOLIDWORKS, but as with a full-cloud application, it appears to have, for all intents and purposes, one shared model, AKA,  a single source of truth.

You can use Shapr3D on Windows touch-enabled tablets and Apple iPads, 2-in-1 devices like Microsoft’s Surface Pro, macOS computers, Windows desktops, the Web with ChromeOS devices and as we are about to see,
view models on smartphones.

We were first dazzled by Shapr3D’s use of a stylus and iPad—the most natural interface ever for a Parasolid-based solid modeler—but we simultaneously worried about how many engineers would leave their Window-based comfort zone for iPads. The release of Shapr3D, now usable on iPadOS, macOS and Windows with input devices favored in the MCAD world like the 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse and the industrial design world like the Wacom tablets, eases Shapr3D’s way into the mainstream.

Shapr3D Cloud

In order to get your models synced as you move from one device or computer to
another, you need to turn on Shapr3D Cloud, a new feature in Shapr3D. This is an option, Csanády is quick to say, to distinguish Shapr3D from applications where it is not.
This wizardry is possible because Shapr3D is backing up your local design on the
cloud, making this new feature a twofer: synchronization and automatic
backup of your designs.

The normal Shapr3D subscription is all that is required to use Shapr3D’s
Multidevice feature. Users will find that picking up your design on the next device will cause the application to shut down on the
previous device. This is to prevent multiple users using a single license.

Webviewer

The newly introduced Webviewer will show the backed-up model to anyone you send a link to. And “drum roll, please,” requests Csanády. “The Webviewer enables an augmented reality view.”

First shared on our last visit to Budapest, the AR view is now ready for prime time. And with it, we see AR images of a Bluetooth speaker on a desk. It didn’t seem like a really big deal until it was pointed out that the AR image was being photorealistically rendered and shown with textures.

“Look closely. See the reflection of the speaker [augmented reality] on the [very real] chrome flowerpot?” asks Csanády, suggesting a technological breakthrough, if not magic.

We could not. It’s there, insists Csanády, frustrated at the limits of Zoom’s ability to show
this breakthrough feature.

We have to believe. The little Hungarian company is not so little anymore. Shapr3D now has 40,000 paying customers. And it continues to dazzle.