Is CAD Too Hard?

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I just sat in on the Mechanical Congress at COFES,  a slightly moderated discussion among CAD company representatives, analysts, and CAD users.  This year’s unofficial theme wasn’t much different from previous years – CAD is too hard. 

Most of the comments came from engineers or engineering managers whose normal duties don’t include much CAD work.  They noted that is shouldn’t take a CAD specialist to work with company data.  I agree.  Look back at the early days of 3D CAD for some examples of how difficult is was – you really did need highly trained CAD operators.  But CAD programs like SolidWorks have made it easier than ever for the occasional user to create, modify, and analyze models.

Matt Lombard recently wrote about the Democratization of 3D CAD.  Matt makes some good points about ease of use, and some of the comments are interesting as well.  I was thinking about what Matt wrote while I listened to the discussion, and now it has me wondering…

Is CAD too hard, or is CAD too easy?

Richard Doyle

Richard Doyle

My official title is Senior User Advocacy & SolidWorks User Groups - but most people just call me "The User Group Guy". I've been a SolidWorks user since 1997, and was one of the founding members of the SWUGN Committee. Since starting the Central Texas SolidWorks User Group in 1999, my career path has led me to DS SolidWorks and a dream job supporting the SolidWorks User Group Network worldwide.
Richard Doyle

@https://twitter.com/swugn

Richard Doyle