The stellar velocity ellipsoid (SVE) quantifies the amount of velocity dispersion in the vertical, radial and azimuthal directions. Since different disk heating mechanisms (e.g. spiral arms, giant molecular clouds, mergers, etc) affect these components differently, the SVE can constrain the sources of heating in disk galaxies. At present the 3D nature of the SVE can only be directly measured in the Milky Way but, thanks to integral-field surveys like CALIFA, we are now in position to carry out the same kind of analysis in external galaxies. For this purpose, we have gathered a sample of ~30 intermediate inclined spiral galaxies along the Hubble sequence (S0 to Scd types) with high quality stellar kinematic maps. This allows us to probe the SVE for each galaxy from different line-of-sights in different regions, and thus provide strong constraints on its shape. In this presentation we relate our preliminary findings to realistic numerical simulations of disks with different formation histories (quiescent vs mergers), and to results of previous works.