GrabCAD, an online community for people designing and building physical products, today announced the closing of a $8.15 million series B round of funding led by Charles River Ventures, along with participation from new investor David Sacks, co-founder of Yammer and former chief operating officer of PayPal, and existing investors Atlas Venture, NextView Venture, and Matrix Partners.

The latest round brings GrabCAD's total funding to $14 million. GrabCAD is using the funds to accelerate company growth as it builds a new collaborative tool that improves design and communication processes in the creation of physical products.

GrabCAD aims to transform the traditionally non-collaborative computer-aided design (CAD) process between mechanical engineers, customers, and manufacturers into a much more efficient experience through the use of social and cloud-based technologies. More than 10 percent of the world's CAD engineers are already part of GrabCAD's online community, where businesses can submit engineering problems to be solved by thousands of experienced and knowledgeable members.

With engineers sharing their talent and learning from others, GrabCAD has become a model for social technology and collaboration best practices in design engineering.

Charles River Ventures partner Izhar Armony will join the GrabCAD board of directors. "GrabCAD is revolutionizing a $10 billion industry by making social and cloud-based technologies fundamental elements of the design process," Armony said. "Hardi and team have tapped into a real need in a market fraught with outdated, siloed approaches."

Current design processes in the mechanical engineering community are hindered by inefficient collaboration. They involve fragmented tools and data that can lead to disconnected project communication. GrabCAD is a place where CAD engineers work together with their design chain partners to create better products faster.

"Engineering design processes have been lot harder than they have to be because the industry has lacked collaboration tools that link people and products easily," said GrabCAD founder and CEO Hardi Meybaum. "GrabCAD simplifies the design process and makes building physical products fun. We are thrilled to have Charles River Ventures join our investment team as we continue to build great tools for engineers around the world."