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.