CAD survey highlights challenges faced by users

The 2006 Kubotek USA Interoperability Survey finds continued and growing challenges for manufacturers working to get products to market quickly due to problems in the design-to-manufacturing processes, including the use of legacy data and disparate CAD systems.

The 2006 CAD Interoperability Survey is Kubotek's latest installment in an ongoing study of key issues that hamper productivity and therefore reduce efficiency in the design and manufacturing workplace. More than 2,800 CAD managers and users responded to the survey.

Kubotek has long known that interoperability issues have historically reduced the effectiveness with which designers and engineers can create, edit and import/export their models. The 2006 CAD Interoperability Survey results shed light on the actual process employed by different CAD users and on the factors that hinder their productivity.

Kubotek found that fully 43 percent of those using history-based CAD systems need to rebuild 3-D models from scratch more than 50 percent of the time in order to complete a design task because it cannot be done using the original 3-D model file. A growing number, 19 percent of those surveyed, are employing alternative direct modeling tools to avoid costly and time-consuming rebuilding of models.

Other highlights of the survey's findings include:

• 50 percent of all respondents indicated that they had to redesign a new part or tool from existing or received 3-D CAD models on a weekly or even more frequent basis.

• 84 percent of the more than 1,000 respondents using a history-based CAD system to open a file and complete a redesign indicated that they need to rework original feature trees.  Of that group, 66 percent indicate that they do so at least 50 percent of the time.

• 43 percent of all respondents indicated that they use the originating 3-D CAD system (the system the model was generated in) less than half the time to make subsequent edits to the model.

• 44 percent of respondents indicated that they receive or send two or more CAD files on a monthly basis which were different than their preferred CAD file type.

• 37 percent of the respondents replied that they receive or send files created from four or more non-preferred CAD file types on a monthly basis.

"As global competition heats up and manufacturing timeframes get squeezed, it's no surprise that the vast majority of designers are reusing pre-existing models," said Bob Bean, chief operating officer of Kubotek USA. "That in turn creates challenges for downstream manufacturers to get critical information needed to build parts. It is common to receive a model from a customer, supplier, or even a fellow employee that was created using a CAD tool that differs from the user's preferred tool. Unfortunately, the imported model frequently has problems that must be worked around."

In addition to providing a general overview of the industry, the survey also provides interesting vertical segment data and gives CAD/CAM users a deeper understanding of the issues which may limit their performance. The complete survey results are available at http://www.kubotekusa.com/company/interopsurvey/index.asp.