- TechShop, Inc., a woodworking and crafts workshop chain, says it has opened its third studio, this one in San Francisco.

The membership-based do-it-yourself studios offer woodworking and other tools for fabrication of wood and metal projects. The San Francisco site features drill presses and band saws, industrial sewing machines, hand tools, woodworking equipment including a 4 x 8-foot ShopBot CNC router, plastics equipment, electronics design and fabrication facilities, Epilog laser cutters, and 2D and 3D design software including applications from Autodesk and Adobe.

Last year the company received $1.7 million in investment funding. TechShop offers training for people of all skill levels on its equipment. It also announced an agreement with Autodesk, which will provide TechShop locations with its Digital Prototyping software, some applications of which are also used in professional wood working and architectural millwork, such as AutoCAD and Autodesk Inventor Professional. Autodesk  also provides high-end workstations to run the software within the TechShop collaborative work areas.