Product update: Refreshing the Shapr3D User Interface

Over the past few years, Shapr3D has gone from being a simple 3D modeling application on iPad to increasing coverage of professional workflows on Windows, macOS and iPad. In addition to countless smaller improvements, we have released 2D Drawings for manufacturing in 2021, Visualization in 2022, and we released the Shapr3D Cloud as the glue that helps you work across different devices and share designs with your team.

Through this all, your needs and your feedback have been the major driving force pushing us forward, and we are nowhere near to done. Over the coming months we have some big releases planned which we are sure will unblock even more professional workflows.

We have been working to create a frictionless experience for Product Design and Manufacturing teams, to help remove roadblocks in your workflow and create better products. Ensuring that Shapr3D remains frictionless, means that we must constantly look critically at our work, polishing the details but also looking at the big picture.

Over the coming months we will be rolling out a refresh of Shapr3D’s User Interface to help make sure that we are able to continue to provide the hundreds of thousands of you depending on Shapr3D with the best possible experience. Our goal with this refresh is to keep everything you have grown to love in Shapr3D, while taking the necessary steps to make sure we provide the same great experience in the future too.

Powerful design tools everywhere

Shapr3D provides a performant native experience on the widest selection of devices of any professional CAD software. We do this so that you and your team can design and collaborate using the hardware you already own, without compromise. Benefit from the mobility of ultrabooks and 2-in-1 devices or fully use the power of your existing workstation computer with our Windows version, experience the speed and performance of Apple silicon with our macOS version, and of course design intuitively on the go with our iPad version.

‍When we launched Shapr3D on Windows and macOS we felt that our user interface was still most heavily optimized for touch. With this refresh we wanted to create an experience that feels at home on each of these platforms, optimized for touch and stylus on tablets, and large screens with keyboard and mouse input on desktops, and we also retained the special sauce that makes it feel like Shapr3D across all platforms.

Faster navigation between spaces

Shapr3D shines as a tool accessible to your whole team, used to help you communicate and design great products together. Depending on who you are working with and what stage of your process you are at, you might need to jump back and forth between the 3D modeling space, 2D Drawings space and the Visualization space.

As part of this refresh, we will be rolling out a new Project sidebar, which shows you all the different design artifacts and makes it easy to switch between them as you work.

Tools at your fingertips

Given our iPad roots, we have always prioritized quite literally putting all the design tools you need right at your fingertips, and we carried this mindset through when we released Shapr3D for Windows and macOS. One of the most meaningful ways we have done this has been our Adaptive User Interface, letting you forget about how to access tools and simply select the geometry you want to work with and receive suggestions from us regarding what tools could be most suitable.

This Adaptive User Interface remains at the core of Shapr3D, and in addition to a visual refresh we have also touched it up to work perfectly across desktops and tablets, and better accommodate the ever increasing tools available within Shapr3D. Additionally, we have reviewed some of the frequently used but previously hidden tools like Section view and Isolate, and moved them to new, prominent places in the Shapr3D toolbar.

Next up

We know that because many of you rely on Shapr3D professionally, changes like these might seem daunting. Ensuring we avoid any friction and provide a seamless transition has been our top priority with this project. We are really excited about everything we will get to share with you over the coming months, this refresh is fundamental to us working on some of the most significant improvements to Shapr3D since we moved to Siemens Parasolid back in 2017.

We encourage you to reach out with any questions you might have for us. We will be rolling out this refresh over the coming months, and we will be following up with a lot more information about the refreshed user interface over the summer, so stay tuned.