Cloud-Hosted Renderer Lagoa Now Drives GrabCAD and SpaceClaim Visualization

Lagoa, which provides web-based 3D rendering, is rapidly expanding its footprint in the mechanical CAD market. Just a week after it signed a partnership with GrabCAD, the company also shook hands with SpaceClaim, the firm behind the popular 3D modeler by the same name.

Now, in GrabCAD Workbench, the SaaS-style collaboration solution from GrabCAD, you’ll have the option to open your uploaded model in a photo-realistic mode using Lagoa. Since GrabCAD also has a partnership with Luxion, Workbench also lets you load your design in KeyShot, Luxion’s rendering program.

In SpaceClaim 2014, released several weeks ago, the software offers integration with Lagoa for rendering and visualization. “The critical point of this integration is that it shifts rendering processing from the desktop to the Lagoa cloud,” said Thiago Costa, CEO and cofounder of Lagoa. “SpaceClaim users retain their processing resources for other tasks, without worrying that using Lagoa is adding to the load.” (For more on the latest release of SpaceClaim, read Beth Stackpole’s blog post here.)

Frank DeSimone, SpaceClaim VP of Software Development, observed, “The easy-to-use tools and presets will allow our users to design sharable, interactive views of their models for anything from client design reviews to online point of purchase.”

In addition to rendering, Lagoa allows users to share interactive visuals in coediting sessions (as you would with Google docs), a feature that facilitates collaborative design reviews. The technology is 100% CPU-based. With access to the API, Lagoa users may create online product-configuration apps (for instance, a car configurator that lets buyers see vehicles in different color and material options).

SpaceClaim is well-established in the 3D modeling and editing market, but the program doesn’t offer built-in visualization tools the way many CAD programs now do (for instance, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, and Autodesk Inventor all come with integrated rendering functions, built right into the modeling window). The company’s partnerships with both Luxion and Lagoa address the growing demand for instant, interactive visualization as part of the design workflow.

Lagoa offers several types of accounts, including a free license (5 GB cloud storage, 2 hours rendering time per month) and a popular $50-per-month professional license (100 GB cloud storage, unlimited rendering time). The company also offers enterprise licenses and developer licenses with API (prices unpublished). Last April, the company raised $1.6 million seed funding. In December, Christmas came early when it closed another round of fundraising with $5.3 million.