To keep pace with your competition, is it time to upgrade your CAD tool?
Tech-Clarity’s How-to Guide for Changing CAD Tools takes a look at this question and investigates what’s involved. Standing out in today’s global economy is not an easy task, so there is the constant quest for innovation. To innovate, many companies are turning to new technologies like 3D printing, new materials, smarter products, and digitalization. Tech-Clarity’s research How to Futureproof Your Product Design finds that 83% of Top Performing companies rate new technology as very important to their innovation goals. At the same time, new technologies can mean new approaches to design. Is your current CAD solution up to the challenge of new design approaches? If not, your CAD tool may be holding you back from bringing higher-performing, higher-quality, and more innovative products to market, making the struggle to keep up with the competition even harder.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systemes – SOLIDWORKS.
Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- Executive Overview
- Understand Business Needs for Design
- What Drives a Change in CAD?
- Set Expectations for the Change
- Identifying Top Performers
- Identify the Right CAD Solution
- Extend CAD
- Conclusion
- Recommendations
- About the Author
- About the Research
- Acknowledgments
Executive Overview
Do you need to upgrade your design capabilities to keep up with competitors? Competing in today’s global economy is not easy. With significant global competition plus pressure from new entrants and innovative startups, it is tough to stand out. Many companies are turning to new technologies such as 3D printing, new materials, smarter products, digitalization, and more to innovate. Tech-Clarity’s research, How to Futureproof Your Product Design, finds that 83% of Top Performing companies rate new technology as very or extremely important to their innovation goals. However, many of these technologies require new approaches to design. Will your CAD tool support these new approaches? With the right design tools, companies are better positioned to quickly bring high-performing, high-quality, innovative products to market. If you are struggling to keep up with competitors, your CAD tool may be holding you back.
So what should you do if you find your CAD tool is holding you back? Should you consider a change? If so, what should you expect? Is it worth the time to convert archived data into a new format? Most importantly, do the benefits outweigh potential risks? Tech-Clarity surveyed 192 companies to answer these questions. While there are many interesting findings, the most striking is that over time, business reasons rather than problems with CAD tools have become more influential when choosing a new CAD tool. Growing influencers include supply chains, the vendor’s vision for design, and the CAD vendors’ full breadth of offerings. This indicates CAD is now viewed as a strategic piece of a larger product development solution.
The biggest challenges of switching CAD tools are overcoming the learning curve and reusing legacy data. However, you do not need to convert all legacy data. In fact, on average, companies only convert about half of it, 52%. Despite the efforts involved, companies who have made a CAD change tend to be very happy. Eighty-three percent (83%) of respondents rate their satisfaction a four or five on a scale of one to five.
The study also identified what successful companies look for in a new CAD tool. Top Performers are more likely to consider ease of use, Technical Support, software quality, and market share, which includes the size of the user community. Since implementing their current CAD tools, Top Performers have reduced development time by 19%, development costs by15%, and the time to implement ECOs (engineering change orders) by 16%. They have also been able to increase the number of design iterations by 17%, helping them achieve greater levels of innovation.
Conclusion
Empowering engineers can help companies as they struggle to compete in today’s global economy. Quickly developing high-quality, innovative products, more economically helps companies differentiate and stand out from competitors. CAD tools, in particular, can have a significant impact on a company’s ability to achieve this. CAD has evolved significantly, and those who find their existing tool no longer meets their needs or will not support plans for growth may want to consider switching CAD tools. In many cases, companies have found it has had a very positive impact on their business.
Top Performing companies are more likely to consider ease of use and support resources when selecting a CAD tool. This contributes to their ability to realize even more value, in less time.
Recommendations
Based on industry experience and research for this report, Tech-Clarity offers the
following recommendations:
- Understand the business goals of your design process and ensure your CAD tool will support them. If not, consider a change.
- Consider other factors beyond the features and functions of the CAD tool, but also the ability to collaborate with your supply chain, market share including available community, the vendor’s vision, the relationship with the vendor, and the needs for other supporting design tools.
- Consider extended applications as part of the CAD solution, such as embedded simulation, PDM, technical communications, and support for electrical components.
- Avoid overestimating requirements for training and loss of productivity by considering ease of use as well as available resources such as Technical Support, market share, and potential hiring pools.
- Convert only the legacy data you need. It’s likely, you will only need half of it.
*This summary is an abbreviated version of the white paper and does not contain the full content. A link to download the full research is available above.
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