Ideas

Not a lot here to comment on. How is this different from the dozens of other 3D stock model/texture sites?

I second daraddishman.

As a businesses tool, maybe you could forgo businesses advertising for other random businesses. Maybe you could develop it inside something like CH.

This is different because rather just down being able to see and download models, tools would actually be provided to edit them within the browser and then have them saved and for others to be able to edit them.

Current stock sites require you to download a model, edit it in some external program and then manually re-upload it.

Sounds like you should visit second life.

Open source, free, can do everything start to finish.
Blender - http://www.blender.org

or

By tool did you mean some type of file sharing system?

Sort of like Second Life...

I'm thinking CAD - product design. So you could create real 3d products collaboratively - function, design, form, materials, and so forth.

Yes, Blender is neat, but if you want to share models you need to email or upload them. If you want to do collaborative design with Blender, it is not the easiest thing to do.

I see you comment Kevin, with all due respect, something like saying, "Why do you need wikis? you already have OpenOffice, a great open source document creation tool."

And pleaes excuse me, yes, there would be file sharing system.

I think Jashaka attempted to impliment something a bit like this, but it is with media, not so much 3d design.

Jahshaka* http://jahshaka.org/

Nothing wrong with fine lining what's out there.

In most/many cases 3D in browsers is still quite slow. I have looked some time ago at 3D API's for ActionScript and they do exist, but models with only 100 polygons were already pushing the frame rate to the limit.

Java now supports openGL, so perhaps openGL can be used in Java Applets, but i'm not sure about the speed of that.

I second Zentropy - we need a LOT more local/cloud processing power and bandwidth for true 3D modeling. Maybe in 5-10 years....

The competition that immediately springs to mind is Google's (free) SketchUp program, which also allows users to build 3D models and upload them to a database. Perhaps it's not exactly what you're suggesting, but if you haven't tried it I would recommend a look.

My comment was actually more like. If you want to use free 3d tools for professional development then you can use Blender. or Were you talking more about some type of file sharing system between users so they could work on 3d projects and share there work? Its, a perfectly valid question to ask.

Quite honestly, there is no real way you are going to get professional level 3d molding tools fully online browser based. The lag would be huge. The processing requirements are just not there. You can have someone rudimentary but still quite good models made online. But, why would you want to do that instead? Plus, how exactly would you collaborate at the same time? The only way to really do it is to save and then share files and work together on the big picture.

I really do not understand sorry.

It exists, check http://a.viary.com/
very cool....

So, the idea is proven very good ;-)