Recently Tinkercad.com announced it has disabled new sign-ups and will be eventually closing down the site entirely come June 2014. The team has mentioned a newly launched project called "Airstone", aimed at developing a new more robust online design environment. Sounds very promising, but for the time being how will this effect 3d printing maker movement? Read Tinkercad's FAQ is up for users of the site to read.
"Effective immediately we have closed signups for new users
April 30 2013 – All free accounts will be changed to read only
August 31 2013 – All academic accounts will be changed to read only
December 31 2013 – All paid accounts will be changed to read only
June 31 2014 – Read only access for all users will be discontinued"

blog.tinkercad.com/faqs

Tinkercad was a really cool idea, but as far as we've seen, it seems like its loss will be not too likely to drastically affect the maker community. This is especially true as options like 3dTin and OfficeCAD are popping up all over the place.

For those looking for something more desktop based, a pretty efficient and completely free design suite that we've liked (though we've moved to mostly Solidworks now) is the 123d suite - It has software to turn 3d into 2d, allow you to "sculpt" with your tablet device, make 3d models from pics and also do regular 3d modeling. Options like it are likewise popping up everywhere, which is pretty fab. : - )

It would be interesting to see a CAD developer do something with Diaspora network based machines or similarly tight P2P options.

- Heather and Joe