

Tinkercad Raises $1 Million, Aims To Popularize 3D Printing - FrejNorling
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/08/tinkercad-raises-1-million/

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replicatorblog
Kai, What are the limitations you'll face in the browser? Will you be able to
handle compound curvature in the future? I love the concept and it seemed to
be a hit at MakerFaire NYC!

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kaib
The first thing you need to realize is that Tinkercad is only partially a
browser application, we also run a relatively complex cloud based component.
Every operation you make is actually distributed across a 100 core cluster
with the result shipped back in a few hundred ms. We try to hide this as much
as possible so unless you look at the application with a debugger it's hard to
notice. I did a tech talk at Google about the full architecture here:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aY4a9QnLhw>

The browser itself is pretty robust. Our biggest issue is with old graphics
drivers that cause problems with WebGL, this is an age old problem from game
development. Hopefully more 3D web application will help graphics hardware
vendors push out more stable software.

To answer your specific question. Our stack should be able to handle compound
curvatures, the big question for us is how to make the UI manageable.

~~~
tjoff
_The first thing you need to realize is that Tinkercad is only partially a
browser application, we also run a relatively complex cloud based component.
Every operation you make is actually distributed across a 100 core cluster
with the result shipped back in a few hundred ms._

Interesting, but why? Just curious, I know nothing about javascript, WebGL
etc. but what operations are not suitable to do on the client?

If WebGL is supposed to be able to drive games etc. shouldn't it be able to
handle this, without any help? (avoiding JS might be enough but I often feel
that the, practically unlimited, power of the client is ignored)

(only looked at the intro-demo of the google talk, will probably watch the
rest when I have time)

~~~
kaib
The answer is somewhat technical so bear with me. tl;dr solid modeling is
O(n^3)

Computer graphics, which is what most games require, is largely a solved
problem. An iPad or a WebGL browser is easily able to run most games from a
few years ago without sweating too much. However, to model physical objects
you don't just need a graphical representation, you need what's called a solid
geometry kernel. What the kernel does is give you the ability to do boolean
operations on two solid objects, something Tinkercad does with every editing
operation. The problem is that these operations are computationally extremely
complex, fundamentally O(n^3).

When I say we use a 100 core cluster I specifically mean that many operations
_use the whole cluster_. So if a single operation you make in Tinkercad takes
200ms of cluster wall time you might be using 10s of CPU time. And the code we
run on the servers is optimized and vectorized Go/C++ code, easily 10x faster
than anything you could do in Javascript. A second consideration is that we
use gigabytes of memory to do each operation, which gives us the advantage of
much faster running times. So when you compound these, instead of having to
wait a second for your operation (depending on where you are located) a
Javascript version would take minutes or _hours_ for every operation.

The kernel we have is unique, it is written from scratch for Tinkercad. As far
as we know there is no equivalent even in the high end professional tools.

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extension
Wow, 10s of CPU? This is just for intersecting and slicing polygons? How many
polys are we talking about, typically?

~~~
4ad
Tinkercad kernel is not polygon based, that creates a lot of problems, it's
voxel based.

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joshu
I wonder how they managed to misspell my first name.

~~~
kaib
It is _always_ my fault.. Sadly spell checkers don't help a dyslectic like me
with names. Sorry, we still love you! :-)

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joshu
Heh... Usually Techcrunch misspells my LAST name, so I was surprised.

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Mizza
I LOVE Tinkercad. Really, really cool tool. I've made some stuff that got 3D
printed using it.

~~~
joshu
Post some pictures, please?

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kaib
Kai from Tinkercad here. Happy to answer any questions about the product or
space.

~~~
scrrr
Hi, I have an idea for something that I could really use but can't find
anywhere.. So let's say I design my thingy, I'm thinking of roughly the size
of 20cm x 5cm x 4cm, how much would it roughly cost to have this printed and
sent to me? Would it get much cheaper if I ordered 20 or 100 pieces?

~~~
kaib
This depends largely on material choice and to a lesser extent on which
supplier you choose. Tinkercad is a design package, we don't do the printing
ourself but outsource it to printing services like Shapeways and
i.Materialise. I would suggest taking a look at their sites to figure out
prices and materials.

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jerguismi
Will you keep your operations in Finland or move somewhere else?

~~~
kaib
I used to live in Mountain View, CA and only moved back to Finland quite
recently so we have a very strong connection to the Valley. It's no
coincidence that we took money from the likes of Joshua, Eghosa, Taher and
Jyri who all operate in the Bay Area. And True is obviously based there as
well.

Speculating about the future is always dangerous but I think we will end up
having a strong engineering presence in Finland. I also think it's very
probable that we'll have another office in North America, maybe in the Valley.

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Bdennyw
Congrats Kai!

