Engineering Productivity to Drive Generative Design to More Than 16 million Users by 2030

The market for software with generative design tools will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 24% to reach US$44.5 billion for over 16 million seats in 2030. According to a new report published by ABI Research, a market foresight advisory firm providing guidance on transformative technologies, these sales include licenses and subscription revenues for computer-aided design (CAD) products with generative design tools or standalone generative design software products.

“Today, many engineers have started to use topology optimization tools, but design software tools have already evolved,” says Pierce Owen, principal analyst at ABI Research. “While both topology optimization and generative design enable the design of lighter, cheaper components while maintaining strength and solidity, ultimately creating a higher quality product, generative design creates, or generates, the geometric shapes from an engineer’s requirements rather than changing existing shapes.”

Three vendors (Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes and Siemens) have captured most of the early market share, but in November 2018, PTC acquired Frustum and will embed Frustum’s entire solution into Creo as a kernel with native integration. Frustum currently only has a few thousand users of its own products, but Creo has hundreds of thousands, which will immediately place PTC among those other leaders.

Dassault Systèmes comes to market with generative design tools in its CATIA product, and several of Siemens products, including NX, NX Nastran, HEEDS, Capital and Simcenter 3D, generate and validate designs in the context of constraints with a combination of AI, rules-based algorithms, and GPU processing.

The automotive industry represents the largest opportunity globally with US$18.5 billion in generative design software revenues forecasted for 2030, but the largest industry differs from country to country. In China, which will overtake the United States as the largest market, industrial machinery represents the biggest opportunity, generating US$5 billion in generative design software revenues in 2030. In France, aerospace & defense leads the way.

“At first, generative design will grow with additive manufacturing in automotive and aerospace & defense, but, as more engineers start to use these tools, they will see that generative design has applications beyond additively manufactured parts. Vendors that provide tools for generated designs to adapt to whatever machinery and equipment their clients already have and integrate deeply but openly with other existing IT and OT systems, will likely grow the fastest,” concludes Owen.

These findings are from ABI Research’s Generative Design Market Tracker market data report.

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ABI Research

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.

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