There’s an interesting infographic exploring the Depths of Cloud Storage put out by 3DVIA. It’s framed from “a 3D Designer’s perspective” or rather, from the argument in favor of cloud storage. It’s a great illustration and nothing that’s directly pushing 3DVIA products or services, but it brought up a question… What in the wide, wide world of sports happened to 3DVIA’s products and services?

The new 3DVIA Cloud

As you may recall, 3DVIA.com was once a community site centered around a 3D model library where you could share your data. Now it’s 3DVIA Cloud, a site focused around presenting your 3D data in three ways–3D apps, 3D walkthrough and 3D share–lined up with three products: 3DVIA Spotlight, 3DVIA Scenes and 3DVIA Share. From the look of it, the site is aimed at a higher tier of 3D user with headlines beckoning you to, Accelerate and enhance your marketing and sales process with great 3D presentation apps.

Definitely more of a corporate feel, but the community is still there. When you’re logged in, you’re taken to a dashboard that contains all the models uploaded to the original 3DVIA, along with new sections for your Spotlights (apps) and Scenes (walkthroughs). There wasn’t much of an announcement, except for on the blog and in the 3DVIA forums, where in a post titled The New 3DVIA: What do you guys think? Dave Laubner, VP Strategy and Marketing for Dassault says,

We designed the site so that the Dashboard will ultimately become the homepage for you. With a few exceptions, most of what was on the homepage should be there… or there next week.

So, I had to ask Dave, What prompted the change and the move of Composer to SolidWorks? Dave explains,

“Both are pretty customer centric updates. On the 3DVIA Cloud; It is a repackaging of the existing website to focus on what many of the users were actually using the site to accomplish. We studied the users of the site and realized that many were uploading to the site to present their work – sharing files, feedback on projects, sales pitches on mobile, etc.

Most of the existing site is now organized under 3DVIA Share, our 3D content warehouse and a set of 3D marketing apps. 3DVIA Share is a bit like a “dropbox of 3D” that includes the file storage, groups sharing, and our 3D web and mobile viewers (iOS). Its purpose is pretty simple….to share your 3D work.

The current apps are 3DVIA Scenes, the real-time 3D walkthrough app, and a new product called 3DVIA Spotlight. This takes a group of models and their associated files (images, videos, docs, etc.) and creates mobile marketing apps that are shared via web links. Like a drag-and-drop app creator without the app store approval and no programming. We hope to add more apps including 3rd party apps.

3DVIA Composer has not “moved” in that sense. We made the decision to provide a branded version of Composer for the Solidworks customer base. Two main reasons: 1) to leverage the Solidworks branding; and 2) to provide a consistent user experience as it relates to product download and activation – to make it the same as with the Solidworks product. 3DVIA Composer is still available, more for our large direct-sales accounts.

So 3DVIA Composer is still available as ‘3DVIA Composer’, but If you’re still wondering what has happened to 3DVIA Shape, Search and the other 3DVIA tools, there’s a location on the 3DVIA website that houses it all. 3DVIA Resources stores the links to all the 3DVIA you remember. There you’ll find links to the 3DVIA Model library, the 3DVIA Shape modeling app and links to the other 3DVIA products on the Dassualt website. 3DVIA TV is here. Oh, and you can’t forget the Billions game. You can find that here.

It seems like everyone is vying for the “Dropbox of 3D” title of late, except none of the 3D file storage/share/viewing/management apps or websites have the basic key feature of Dropbox that is file/folder syncing between desktops, phone and website. From experience, the nearest “Dropbox for 3D” is Box.com and they don’t even have 3D file viewing. TeamPlatform is the most mature in the cacophony of share sites, taking on the interest of teams and program management while others focus on individuals or single projects. That Dassault would decide on the name 3DVIA Cloud is pretty brave, with reasons leading to the creation of interesting infographics still prevalent. I’m not sure a big deal needs to be made about the cloud though. It’s just there. We use it everyday. Hardly a person or company is not connected in some way, whether it’s to an intranet, extranet or mobile device.

Author

Josh is founder and editor at SolidSmack.com, founder at Aimsift Inc., and co-founder of EvD Media. He is involved in engineering, design, visualization, the technology making it happen, and the content developed around it. He is a SolidWorks Certified Professional and excels at falling awkwardly.