Brothers Alex Mazzardo and Mario Mazzardo started the solidThinking project in 1991 with Guido Quaroni, today Vice President of Software R&D at Pixar Animation Studios.

The design software was originally developed for NEXTSTEP, the operating system developed by NeXT, and it was soon awarded as the best new application in the "CAD and 3D" category at NeXTWORLD EXPO held in San Francisco in June 1993.

The Construction History and an extensive NURBS modeling toolset were the main additions.

One year later solidThinking for Mac OS X was also released.

Today all releases of solidThinking are simultaneously developed for both Windows and Mac OS X.