It's worth having a free account on the BikeCAD.ca web site. Having one allows you to save designs to your My Designs section which is only visible to you. You can also contribute your designs to the public Design Archive and participate on the BikeCAD forum.
When you post a design in the archive, or when you post a question or answer in the forum, your contribution will always be linked to your profile. The video above describes all the options that are currently available in setting up and getting the most out of your profile.
You can configure your profile by going to My account and selecting the Edit tab.
Be aware that you can change your Username at any time. Perhaps you'd like to identify your business a little more clearly. In the above example, rather than simply going by Joe, Joe could use the username Joes Bikes. It's not a problem to use spaces and capital letters in your name. The only thing Joe can't do here is put the apostrophe in the name Joe's Bikes.
It's also worth uploading a nice image for your avatar. You can use any size image you like. In the above example, Joe's already uploaded a profile picture which is great, but just to demonstrate another option, Joe could upload his company logo as an avatar instead.
If we scroll down and hit save and then click view to see the profile as others will see it. You can see Joe's avatar in the top right corner. If you click on the image, a larger view of the image will appear in it's original size.
The top section of your profile displays any text that you include in the About me section. It is okay to include HTML hyperlinks in this section. These links must be in the form shown here for example: <a href=http://"www.mylink.com" target="_blank">Link title</a>.
There is also a special section where we can display links to our own web sites. The URL for our primary and possibly secondary web sites is entered on the right and the text to display for these links is entered on the left.
Many commercial builders and shops will also have various social media accounts. Links to these are shown below the web site links. The above video shows where these input fields are located in the Edit tab. Be sure to include the full URL to your account including http://
Below your social media links will appear any bikecad models that you've added to the public Design Archive. Note that this will likely be a smaller subset of the designs that you see in your My Designs section.
You are also encouraged you to add your location to the BikeCAD user map. If you fill out your full address down to the postal code and optionally to the street, the system should automatically place your location on the map. If you prefer, you could type in less information about your actual address, but use the embedded map to position a marker in your vicinity.
There's also a link on the map page to the BikeCAD Pro Owners list. If you add your location to the map and are also a BikeCAD Pro owner, you will also appear on this page. There's a tool at the top of this page which allows you to display owners by category, for example, custom builders or bike shops and fit specialists. If you are a BikeCAD Pro owner, you should also select the appropriate category for yourself in your account profile. You can select multiple categories by holding down the Shift key.
Filling out your profile is another way to promote your bicycle business or simply build community among hobby builders. Why not fill yours out today?