Advanced Functions in CAD: What Do You Really Need?

Everything grows. Even when you don’t want or need it to. CAD has grown into CAE and CAE into PLM, PLM into digital factory, Industrial Revolution 4.0, and what ever. What we used to think of as “CAD companies” now deal with a mind blowingly huge assortment of technical and non-technical product development business software to encompass everything they can imagine. So for some of us people “of a certain age”, we’re kind of stuck with 80’s rock and roll, wishing we had enough hair for a mullet to still look good, and how cool we think CAD is, even though no one else cares anymore.

CAD was cool for a couple of decades because it helped us visualize real product geometry on the screen. Do you remember drawing on the board or even in 2D-only programs, where you had to build the 3D model in your head from the 2D views, and then from your mental 3D model, re-project to create the next view? 3D CAD made that sooooo much easier, and those of us with the internal 2d-to3d-to-2d skill sets took to the new technology immediately.  In the same way,  3D print has become the new cool kid because we can take visualization to the next step and create functional parts right from the same data that gives us the computer graphics.

The main question I want to talk about here is the fact that somebody is trying to determine the needs of an “average CAD user” or some standard potentially greater than average but less than a combination of functions that would cover all CAD users,  which maximizes sales revenue and minimizes development expense. No matter where you draw that line, you’re going to annoy someone. Draw it too high, and you’ve got a product that’s too expensive, like, say Catia. Draw it too low, and you’ve got something that doesn’t make a market impact (professionally), like, say Sketchup.

Most of the current mid-range CAD tools have been forced to compete at the same level, pretty much. They include surfacing, sheet metal, structural framing,  some simple wire/tube functionality, but with add-ons for molding, piping. Most CAD vendors sell packages where they put in functionality they know you’ll need combined with some tools you probably won’t use, like the animation, or cost rollup functionality. Is it smart for them to include extra stuff that you probably won’t use, and pretend that it adds value to the bundled package?

It really leads to a question of how much of your existing software do you use? Do you think you would benefit from an even more finely grained modularization of the product? Do you use Weldments? Sheet Metal? Surfacing?

In reality, some of the specialized functionality is added because of one large customer that throws their weight around. So in a way that’s good, because the large customer gets what they want and everyone else benefits from it to some extent.

But on the other hand, a lot of people paid for that development who will never use that part of the product. So would you pay more for the stuff you use in order to not get what you don’t use?

In the end, I think its better to expose more people to more areas of the product, even if they don’t really use it. Like the reverse engineering stuff – ScanTo3D. You can test it during beta, play with it, if you ever get a scanned model, and that much doesn’t cost you extra. It’s there, and to some extent you’ve paid for it. Someone in your company should be taking advantage of all of these opportunities that you’ve paid for that people tend to not use. You might find new and better ways of doing certain things without any additional outlay of cash.  Think of what kind of hero you’d be if you could find new tools in that pile of functionality you never look through any more.