A changing climate for CAD

NASA Tech Briefs, Mar 2002

Primrose agrees that 2D will never entirely go away, but he sees 3D as the best choice. "There will always be people who refuse to move from 2D. They might be able to make a drawing on the paper, but they get no benefit out of having a simple paper drawing. When it comes to changing designs, there is tremendous op portunity for errors if you don't have 3D."

Primrose also sees ease of use as a barrier to 3D that still exists. "Going forward, if you ask people what the most important attributes of a CAD system are, I don't think we - ourselves or our competitors - have come up with a radical change in usability. While we have lots of people talking about clever, cool features, the next thing is to come up with a whole new paradigm that will make CAD systems a whole generation easier to use."

Until that happens, 31) won't be the dominant technology, according to IronCAD's Murphy. "It's still probably a 2D design world," he predicted. "Do I believe 95 percent of people will be using 3D in the near future? No, I don't. It doesn't always make sense to use 3D," he added. "Many 2D users will tell you that the value they would get from moving to 3D is not worth the pain. You have a toolbox, and you pull out the right tool for the job. You wouldn't say, `In the future, all repairs will be done with a hammer.' Design also has a bit of that, even though you don't have as many tools. There are certain tools you use because they are the best for the job. You have to make the call," Murphy said.

IBM, Autodesk, and SolidWorks have products designed specifically to help users move "painlessly" to 3D, which they feel will be the majority of the CAD world very soon. "I think 98 to 100 percent of people will use 3D tools. I think it needs to happen," said Kross. "If you make machines and you use 2D, and you're trying to compete with the machine maker down the street who's using 3D, you can't compete. He'll make a better machine he can understand better, and even more importantly, he can use his design data and product data in different ways - in his brochures, on his Web site."

SolidWorks' McEleney agrees, but adds that the migration will happen more quickly than most think. "The fact is it won't happen this year, but it won't take ten years - I can tell you that. The world will move to 3D for a number of reasons, and the drivers behind it are simple," he said. "The average workforce is getting older, and as the older workers retire, today's graduates are the ones who grew up playing video games. They learned and work in a world based on 3D. As the older generation with a 2D legacy retire, the resistance level to 3D will come down."

Is a completely 3D world a better one? McEleney has mixed feelings about that. "The scary thing is as we adopt these 3D tools, are we going to lose any of the elegance and simplicity of engineering? As a vendor, I'm hardpressed to fight that, because I think it's true. But it's a change for the better," he said. "If you look at the products manufactured today, they're all better because of 3D design tools."