Finding new engineering solutions is key to improving the profitability of a design business. Only by delivering innovative and high-quality products can a company achieve a competitive advantage.
But creating a great product can be challenging and may not be enough. Your product has to stand out while being affordable to customers. And to do so, a designer must keep their tools sharp and up-to-date.
In the past, designers had to use paper, pencils, pens, and other tools to make a blueprint. But computer-aided design (CAD) software changed the industry. It makes drafting more automated and accurate and allows a designer to check out each detail of a part, even the internal features. 3D CADs even may be rotated and magnified on any axis, which helps understand how components interact.
The global 3D CAD software market size was valued at $9.46 billion in 2020 and is expected to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.4% from 2021 to 2028. The 3D CAD software is being widely adopted because of the rising demand in the design industry, primarily in healthcare, aerospace, and defense.
Difference between 2D and 3D CAD files
2D shows the length and height of an object without depth. Objects in 2D drawings may come in the form of rectangle, square, triangle, and polygon, among others. Thus, products and engineering design drawings in 2D CAD systems are regarded as a collection of geometric elements, measured in cubic centimeters. Because the models are also made in 2D, it is impossible for designers without the technical background to understand what the final product will look like.
Unlike the 2D CAD models, 3D drawings include cylinders, cubes, spheres, pyramids, prisms, and more. So the models there represent objects with height, width, and depth, allowing designers to see the actual shape of the product.
A 3D model also contains various information about the lines, faces, entities, and points of the product’s geometry. It makes it possible to see the final product in the way that most people can understand. This also makes a 3D version of a product way easier to present to consumers and employees.
Why does moving to 3D help?
Same as the change from drafting tables to 2D CAD software speeded up the process of design, the transition from 2D to 3D CAD tools improves product development. It helps save substantial amounts of time and money, while simultaneously improving efficiency and maintaining quality. The technology encourages designers to be more innovative, as by seeing a design from various angles and perspectives, an engineer can come up with new ideas for improvement.
Constantly improving a design means changing it all the time. Updating a 2D model requires a lot of time-consuming manual work. In manufacturing, it becomes a huge problem, because other parts that are impacted by the update need to be changed as well. This leads to potential errors, collisions, and interferences, which one is unlikely to notice until the product is assembled. Finding these problems in 2D is laborious and difficult, even for the most experienced engineers.
Releasing a design to production often requires another engineer to convert 2D drawing into a 3D CAD model. This interim step adds another link to the chain of production, and this link is redundant. This alone speeds up the production greatly and helps engineers to play safely in terms of avoiding errors.
In general, making a move to 3D brings along many advantages such as improved product quality and design efficiency, as well as more convenient workforce organization. This software further offers a number of advantages over 2D CADs such as easier product presentation and visualization. 3D CAD software aids in accelerating the deployment cycle of the product with optimization and virtual testing.
Why do people still use 2D CADs?
Resistance to change among those who have been doing their work the same way for a long time is the main reason why people still use 2D. For some, it is just easier to keep doing it as they used to, instead of adapting to a more comfortable way. This problem usually has roots in the general lack of communication inside a company.
People convinced that the way they do the job is the best way possible can reconsider their point of view only when seeing that the work of other links in the supply chain staggers because of them. But to do so, a team needs a strong leader with experience in 3D systems who can guide this change for others.
Another problem that may arise is the lack of vision. Some people think that the cost of transition exceeds the profits that 3D modeling gives. This may be hard to prove, as the profits can only be seen after the change is completed.
