A look into the future of CAD

The company Evrika conducted a survey of three companies - CAD developers, which technologies they consider new.

Now is the time when new releases from CAD manufacturers appear on the market, and this is an interesting time. Much has been said about changing paradigms, future trends, and a new unique opportunity for advancing engineering and design solutions. Interestingly, different manufacturers have little in common, many of them adopt fundamentally different concepts, which leads to some truly new and unique proposals.


The explosion of the market for mobile devices and social networks is what PTC wants to earn (Parametric Technology Corporation, developer of Pro / Engineer, MathCAD, etc.). It recently released the mobile solution WindChill , available at the Apple AppStore, and plans to make it available on Android and Windows-mobile platforms.

Taking into account another trend - the development of social media, PTC is going to introduce elements of style and functions of Facebook and forums into its PLM system called SocialLink . She has already done this with the Winchill system and hopes to transfer ideas and practical implementation to the Creo system this year.
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The use of social media for commercial purposes is something that definitely gives rise to growth, and many companies are adopting this idea. Most likely, if you are over 50 years old, then you think that this is a waste of time, and if you are under 30 years old, then you cannot imagine working without it. Those of us who are between these age groups are trying to make this idea work somewhere deep down. The concept of improving the functionality of the Web goes into what is called Web 2.0, and the use of social media in the workplace, respectively, is called Enterprize 2.0 . PTC believes that the paradigm shift today is a transition from email to social networks.

Mostly in industry doubt it. However, we are increasingly seeing CIOs with the iPad. They understand that the world has become mobile, and see the value of it.

- says David Blair, vice president of technology at PTC.

The future of software development is the ability to engage all people in the company. Imagine that instead of asking a question to a person near you, you could immediately ask the whole company. Email is a great tool, but you still need to know who to write!

Many SocialLink elements have Twitter functionality. You can refer to a person using the @ symbol ( @ eureka ), elements can be tagged so that they form themes ( #design_software ), and people can choose specific developers and specific projects to get news about them.

The idea is that users have profiles that are tied to specific networks. You may have specific products or specific technologies, such as plastics. The system is reasonable and will store previous projects so that they can be searched, so you can find those who have already done something similar, see the problems they encountered, and contact them if necessary.

People can share ideas, solve problems and ask questions. The project manager may blog, instead of sending weekly email with reports on the state of affairs with the project. Plastics communities can share their best practices, and if you're stuck, you can use these opportunities to collect offers online.

says David Blair.

It is important that, for example, if you have a problem with a plastic mold, you can talk about it, and every employee of your company who specializes in plastics or scans the net on plastics can see your problem and offer help. This may be an engineer from another country, you would not know that he can help. This may be a factory whose designers you never had, but they can give advice on what would be better in terms of manufacturability.

PTC wants Winchill and Creo products to be easily used as Enterprize 2.0 systems, and incorporates many features into these products. There will be one button to create a post, comment or follow (follow). Of course, safety and the possibility of choice - to someone what to show, can and should be managed and accessible locally. How this will affect performance and how slow it will be will be seen.
But the fact is that systems of the Enterprize 2.0 level in the future will become much more integrated with the workflow.

However, the concept of interconnectivity of PTC PLM systems does not support the relative newcomer to the CAD industry, Space Claim . She recently released Space Claim 2012 , the ninth version since the company was founded five years ago.

Space Claim wants to offer a CAD system that has more functionality and is at the same time easy to use. The company claims that there are more than 25 million mechanical engineers in the world, and only 1 million today are CAD users. This seems to be a huge untapped market with great potential for its product.

Peter Kelly, Space Claim's director of sales for Northern Europe, says:

Each manufacturer says about its product that it is easier to use. But we still exceed this figure by 10 - 20 times. When you talk about 3D geometry in the engineering process, you have a drawing team and many other engineers who may be involved, but sometimes they cannot cope with really complex systems. Simplicity is our main advantage.

Space Claim’s concept is to remove as much “bureaucracy” as possible from the development process and keep the system simple, easy to use and as compatible as possible with other CAD systems. The company wants to give engineers the tools that allow you to do most of the time designing and spend the least amount of time on setting geometric properties.

However, this software is also capable of performing complex engineering tasks. It uses direct modeling, which is intuitive, allows a non-specialist to quickly move, scale objects with one mouse click and has many Windows functions, such as undo and redo.

Blake Kourter, one of the founders of Space Claim, says:

This idea seems obvious, but to implement it in CAD is not easy. This is a very difficult task, but we solved it in several ways. We interact and are compatible with everyone. However, this is more than just geometry: it equalizes the chances, so that everyone can work with the data of any other.

Curter says that, for example, when modeling Space Claim, a tool used to model the simulation and prepare the geometry for coupling is used.

Most users will have to start modeling from scratch, since they cannot reuse CAD data. When they hear that Space Claim can reuse data, they realize that it will save them a lot of time.

AutoDesk also recently launched a cloud PLM system ( product lifecycle management , Autodesk PLM 360). The company took a sharp turn because Autodesk had previously vowed not to enter the PLM market.

Most often, PLM systems are criticized for the fact that the bureaucratization of everything can lead to the opposite result, when people are mired in the process of ticking, data entry and performance analysis. The fact that you need to manage this amount of data can distract from the original problem: problem solving, development, cost increase.
However, Stephen Bodner, vice president of product development for Autodesk PLM 360, does not agree with this. He says:

Talk to a compliance manager, a vice president for quality, or one of the financiers who is responsible for managing suppliers. This is a completely different story, and we hear that these systems have become much more convenient.

Autodesk believes that the fact that they have never done PLM systems before is one of the company's main advantages. They have no heritage, no baggage that they have to carry. This is a completely new development. Autodesk defines its PLM system in a broad sense, including business applications, project management, requirements management, quality management, compliance, on-site service, and naming guarantees.

We found that in many cases, people need a PLM system, but instead they use a PDM system (product data management - product data management system - approx. Transl.). They can benefit more from using our PLM solution than using a different system for their PDM activity,

says Bodner.

Since PTC is still exploring cloud solutions, it will not make a dash right now. The same can be said from the point of view of mass media about Autodesk. At the moment, the company is developing a project called Blue Streak, which will allow people to comment on the development and easily interact online, but this will not provide them with a quick breakthrough.

We have an idea of ​​social screens in our PLM-product, but we have not turned the lever this way yet. We do not want to bring down another social system on people. I already use at least six of these. Do I want another one? We will give people the opportunity to develop plug-ins in which they do what they want, instead of forcing our specialists to do this,

says Bodner.

PS The article was released in May 2012, the company Eureka , which conducted the study itself is interesting as the British media in the field of design and CAD.