12.4CURRENT TRENDS IN CADTHE CAD FIELD IS DEVELOPING VERY QUICKLY IN...
3.12.4
Current
Trends
in CAD
The CAD field is developing very quickly indeed. At the time of this writing, "stu-
dent editions" of PTC's Pro-Engineer and SDRC's IDEAS are becoming available
for only $100. Thus, even these more sophisticated systems are becoming more
readily available to the average user and are able to run on modest computer sys-
tems in the $1,500to $3,000price range for a well-configured environment. This still
does not mean an end user should "jump right in" and use them. The big issues-dis-
cussed above-are
the "learning curve" and the "library creation for parametric sys-
tems." These trade-offs are captured in Figure 3.32. On the other hand, used in a
nonparametric way, these higher end packages can create excellent feature-based
models. The governing factor seems to "boil down" to how much long-term interest
a person or group has in using CAD tools. Here are three scenarios:
• For a start-up company, where a CAD system might be used only once to gen-
erate an idea and then an FDM prototype, the cheaper nonparametric
approach is recommended.
• Also in small, newer companies, today's evidence is that the turnover among
young engineers is high. It might not be worth investing the training time
needed for the full parametric systems when quite satisfactory designs can be
done with the cheaper systems like AutoCAD, SolidWorks, and so on, which
have a short learning curve.
• But for large, stable companies, if several product revisions will be
designed spanning several months or years, then the time invested in
learning the parametric approach in ProEngineer, SDRC, and the like, will
be worthwhile.