GrabCAD has a good problem on its hands: our online Community of professional engineers, designers, manufacturers, and STEM students has grown to almost 5 million members worldwide who produce a lot of content day in and day out – and we mean a lot!

However, it can get tough to find exactly what you’re looking for in this vast amount of content. Sometimes it can even be difficult for some of your great work to stand out amid the sea of insightful tutorials, design challenges, and CAD models on the GrabCAD Community.

We wanted to develop a solution for that problem: A new more personal and direct way to interact with the Community.

Today we are introducing GrabCAD Community Groups.

Our new Groups section makes it easier for you to find content and discussions related to your own interests. Groups are also there for you to share your passions, talents, and start new discussions with like-minded members.

For example, if you’re interested in 3D printing technologies or even want to learn from specific makers of technologies (like Stratasys’ 3D printers, for example), groups can provide a way to bring the creators of the technology closer to you, allowing you to learn straight from the source.

With GrabCAD Groups you can also connect and network with engineers and designers from your local city, state, or country.

So if you’re an engineer in the Boston area, you might want to join the Engineers in Boston group to interact and connect with other local engineers in town. Who knows, you might even make a new friend or a potential work colleague?

If you find that you want to discuss a topic or area of interest, but you can’t find an existing group, you can always create your own and invite others to join. Groups are by the Community for the Community. Make sure to follow these best practices when creating your group.

Upon first checking out GrabCAD Groups, you can find lots of groups where you can discuss topics ranging from the best music for engineering to tips and tricks for SOLIDWORKS designs. We even created groups for the GrabCAD Community, GrabCAD Workbench, and GrabCAD Print users to let you have a say in what features to build and how to improve what we’ve already created.

After you join the groups that suit you, you will start receiving updates about newly created discussions and replies to your posts. If you want to know exactly what happens in a specific discussion, we added a “follow discussion” button so you will never miss out on anything.

As with all of our new features, we want you to try it out and let us know how to make it better! Did we miss something? Do you have a great idea how to make groups better for everyone? Join the discussion in the GrabCAD Groups users group.

Now, go and check it out for yourself: Browse all Groups.