Press Release

First Public Demonstration of Streamlined 3D Printables Capability Held at Materialise World Conference

BRUSSELS, April 24, 2015. On the occasion of the Materialise World Conference, Materialise NV, a leading provider of Additive Manufacturing software and of sophisticated 3D printing solutions in the medical and industrial markets, provided the first public demonstration of a technology initiative it has been undertaking with Trimble. The preview illustrated how the 3D printing process can be streamlined with new cloud services developed by Materialise to improve the accessibility and printability of 3D models available in Trimble’s 3D Warehouse (https://3DWarehouse.sketchup.com).

Materialise’s cloud services, which are already being used to run the company’s own IdeasWorthMaking.com platform, use decades of experience in developing high-end software to provide powerful tools for 3D Printing in the cloud. IdeasWorthMaking.com was launched in 2014 to drive meaningful applications in desktop 3D printing and has already completed an educational contest by which schools were challenged to find ways in which 3D Printing could make education more engaging. A follow-up challenge called on the Maker community to use their skills to help the ideas generated by the schools a reality.

SketchUp, the world’s most popular 3D modeling and design software, is currently used by more than 30 million designers around the world. 3D Warehouse is a core component to the ecosystem surrounding SketchUp’s 3D modeling and design platform. 3D Warehouse contains over 2.7 Million models, and serves up nearly 4 million downloads to over 700 thousand visitors each week. Through this collaboration, Materialise’s new cloud services will power 3D Warehouse’s Printables feature, generating high-quality STL files utilizing technology that is capable of analyzing and fixing models to ensure printability.

“The belief that design tools should be as simple and intuitive as possible is deeply rooted in the philosophy behind SketchUp. Trimble’s collaboration with Materialise is aimed at eliminating the most common pitfalls and annoyances related to 3D Printing workflows,” said Mike Tadros, Product Manager for 3D Warehouse. “There are a number exciting possibilities that can surely arise from our users being able to share and reliably access print-ready files directly from 3D Warehouse.”

“For the past 25 years, we at Materialise have been developing software to empower useful applications of 3D Printing, both medical and industrial, and help users of 3D Printers to get the most out of their machines. Through this collaboration, which links our new cloud service to 3D Warehouse, our goal is to now deliver an enhanced user experience to a much broader 3D printing community as well,” stated Stefaan Motte, Director of the Software for Additive Manufacturing unit at Materialise. “My hope is that the Printables feature enables this community of designers, artists, makers, and more, to focus even more on the design and creation of meaningful 3D Printing applications, while leaving the question of “Will it print?” to our software.”

Materialise and 3D Warehouse are currently testing the new features in beta, with a full launch planned in the near future.

About SketchUp

SketchUp is the world's most popular 3D modeling platform, used by more than 30 million designers around the world to create, update and communicate designs in 3D. SketchUp is a core product of Trimble Buildings, a part of Trimble's Engineering and Construction segment that delivers solutions to optimize the complete Design-Build-Operate (DBO) lifecycle of buildings. For more information, visit:  www.sketchup.com. 

About Materialise

With its headquarters in Leuven, Belgium, and branches worldwide, Materialise is a provider of Additive Manufacturing (AM) software solutions and sophisticated 3D printing services in a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, automotive, aerospace, art and design and consumer products. Materialise has been playing an active role in the field of AM since 1990, through its involvement in AM for industrial and medical applications, by providing biomedical and clinical solutions such as medical image processing and surgical simulations and by developing unique solutions for its customers' prototyping, production, and medical needs. For additional information, please visit: www.materialise.com.