Mapping Out Major CAD Trends: Strong Growth Potentials in Pay-As-You-Go Products, Cloud CAD, AR/VR, and Mobile Access

Business Advantage, a B2B market research firm, has just released the CAD Trends 2016 report. The insights came from a survey involving a sample pool of 610, a microcosm of the CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM universe. They’re largely from manufacturing (35%) and architecture, engineering, and construction, collectively known as AEC (30%). They represent small firms with 50 employees or less (38%), midsize firms with 50-1,000 employees (40%), and large firms with 1,000+ employees (22%).

The report asks participants to rank their awareness of certain technologies, along with their employers’ current deployment of these technologies. With established, time-tested 3D modeling technologies, the awareness and deployment are fairly even. For instance:

• 87% of the survey participants know about 3D modeling, and 76% use it;
• 75% of the survey participants know about 2D drafting, and 68% use it.

With newfangled technologies, the gap between awareness and deployment is much greater, as expected. For example:

• 79% of the people know about 3D printing, but only 28% use it.
• 58% of the people know about cloud-based CAD, but only 11% use it.
• 41% of the people know about pay-as-you-go or subscription design software, but only 5% use it.

Certain established practices and technologies also suffer from low adoption despite high awareness, which suggests cost, deployment complexity, learning curve, and other factors may be hindering growth. For instance:

• 55% of the people know about simulation and computer-aided engineering (CAE), but only 34% use it;
• 54% of the people know about product lifecycle management (PLM), but only 21% use it.

The authors of CAD Trends 2016 compare this year’s data to the previous years’ to identify momentum and movement in certain trends.

• Responses show a steady climb in awareness in 3D printing: 66% in 2014, 74% in 2015, and 79% in 2016.
• Similar rises in awareness can also be seen in cloud-hosted CAD: 41% in 2014, 51% in 2015, 58% in 2016.

The authors observed, “Some CAD trends are significantly more important to particular sectors, regions, and company types. 2D Drafting, Mobile access to CAD and Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) are significantly more important in AEC; Product data management (PDM), CAM and 3D Printing in Manufacturing; PLM in manufacturing and large companies; Simulation/CAE in large companies.”

The report identifies pay-as-you-go products, cloud-based CAD, AR/VR, and mobile access to CAD as areas with the strongest growth potential.

For more, download the report from Business Advantage.