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The company, set up by two young technology specialists and entrepreneurs – Indrek Narusk and Hardi Meybaum – is developing an all-in-one online environment, which the engineers, designers and design artists of the future will find difficult to manage without. It will be both a necessary tool and a key professional discussion space for them, as the creators state.

The enthusiastic founders of GrabCAD want to use their engineering network to eliminate several bottlenecks, as these cause problems for just over seven million of the world's engineering graduates every day (according to UNESCO figures).

The goal of GrabCAD is to unite millions of engineers and production companies, ensuring that there is always someone available with the necessary resources to complete an order.

GrabCAD launched the web order service for CAD drawings last year. The service works very simply allowing one to make a freehand sketch on paper and then scan it into a computer. Then the person goes to the website GrabCAD.com, uploads the sketch, describes his or her priorities, receives a price quote, and then places an order with just a couple of mouse clicks. The 2D or 3D drawing will be sent to the customer within three business days, along with an invoice.

A full package (a drawing in electronic format, a 3D model and a design) costs 55 euros, each individual service ordered costs 25 euros.

Meybaum says: "We've received orders from fathers in America, for example, who are under pressure due to the economic decline. They keep inventing all sorts of weird things. One guy sketched a trailer for a quad bike on paper; another drew a picture of his own house."

"We cannot complete every single order, though," adds Narusk. "For example, one Asian customer uploaded a picture of a Ford Scorpio engine and then drew an arbitrary arrow somewhere, indicating that he wanted “that component there".

However, preparing drawings is just one small element of the services the company has planned.

"Currently, all orders are completed with our own resources, whereas in the future GrabCAD wants to offer the option of sub-contracting CAD projects. This would mean that users could share projects among one another – one customer would place an order, then another customer would complete it – and this kind of communication would take place around the clock," the developers state.

As users would also rate each project, this would create a ranking of the best performers. Those offering better quality would get more orders.

The total volume of CAD sub-contracts is estimated to increase by ten percent a year.

In the future, the online environment is planned to be provided with a library of engineering designs, where users will be able to share their designs with each other.

"For example, you might invent a new kind of bicycle frame. Instead of designing a saddle and handlebars to go with it, you could just select them from a CAD library, saving time in the process. There are at least a million saddle designs in the world already!" says Narusk.

In the far future, this library could even be included as a set to go with CAD software packages.

In the third and final development stage of GrabCAD, a kind of procurement environment would be added to the entire set of services. This would allow engineers to find manufacturers. Manufacturers would offer their prices, delivery times and other conditions, and the engineer could easily compare them and select the best partner.

One of the key factors in the success of GrabCAD plans to provide communication between engineers, i.e. the principle of a social network. "Engineers are very vain people as well, but unlike users of Facebook or Orkut, they would upload pictures not of themselves, but of their inventions," says Meybaum.

The company has set itself some very ambitious goals. They anticipate 30,000 CAD orders per month and 300,000 active users as early as 2012. By then, the library of engineering designs should already contain 50 million files. And the company expects to make a good profit by then.

Meybaum and Narusk believe that there are no direct competitors with such a complete approach.

Meybaum and Narusk do anticipate some risks for this undertaking. The credibility of the environment presents a separate risk all by itself. If GrabCAD gets swamped by DIY inventors uploading makeshift contraptions, then professional engineers would probably steer well clear of it.

Hardi Meybaum (27) and Indrek Narusk (27) are graduates of the Tallinn University of Technology (product development faculty). Hardi also has a Master's degree in production technologies.

In 2007 they established Futeq, a research and development company involved in product development, design and engineering. Its main customers are companies that have no engineering and manufacturing resources of their own, but still need those services. Projects have varied widely, from simple sprockets to complex check-in kiosks. The company determines the customer's needs, conducts the engineering work and, if necessary, then finds manufacturers too.