By Andreea Andrei, Marketing and Business Administration Executive at The Cloud Computing and SaaS Awards

This article is part of an A to Z series by Cloud and SaaS Awards, continuing with C for Computer-Aided Design (CAD)

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is a software package for creating and editing two-dimensional and three-dimensional models of physical objects. There is a wide variety of sectors in which CAD is used on a very regular basis, especially in engineering, civil or aeronautics, but it is also used by architects of the automotive industry, among others.

What is CAD technology?

CAD technologies allow work to be streamlined, automating the manual processes of the product design, reducing errors, gaining speed, and increasing quality. With CAD, companies achieve greater efficiency and productivity, since it allows them to preview the final product and also play interactively with different designs, without the need to create a large number of prototypes.

In today’s most modernized systems, this process can encompass the shaping, assembly, storage and even the final shipment of the product.

CAD is a starting point for the application of an analysis series and simulation processes of work and operation, which aim to achieve greater quality, reliability, and competitiveness of the created product.

CAD also generates the necessary information to be used by the CAM in the manufacturing of the piece through numerical control systems.

A modern product design and manufacturing process requires the use and integration of these technologies, which have come to facilitate and optimize all manufacturing steps, from the initial conception to making it available to the customer.

In the same way, the incorporation of these processes implies the need to raise the qualitative level of the personnel, which also results in the optimization of manufacturing and the final quality of the product.

Industries where CAD software is needed

Dental Industry

CAD technology is currently one of the most useful systems in aiding the design and manufacture of parts for dental treatment.

It is used almost exclusively in restorative dentistry treatments, since with this digital technology, a 3D image of the patient’s oral structures can be obtained. The software can plan and design parts such as crowns for dental implants, prosthetics, or veneers with the highest precision.

The advantages provided by CAD are very broad, both for the patient and for the dental clinic:

  • Avoids having to take the molds off the mouth to plan the treatment and create the custom-made piece. Not only saves time, but avoids patients’ discomfort
  • Dental laboratories receive a precise, exact, and detailed image of the piece to be created. Errors in the design and manufacture of these parts are, thus, reduced
  • The creation of prostheses, implants, and veneers is streamlined thanks to the software
  • The patient has to wait much less time to get the dental treatment they need
  • The effectiveness and success of treatments is increased

Overall, by reducing the probability of errors, both in the creation of the pieces and in the placement, the patient will obtain better results.

Automotive Sector

Increasingly accessible, CAD is becoming the common language among the automotive supply chain industry companies, both large and small. The future of software points to ease of use and to less human intervention.

Automotive companies are constantly faced with the challenges of increasing their efficiency and improving the quality of their products. To meet these challenges, all automakers are looking for new technologies and methods to shorten development time, reduce the intensity of manufacturing, in addition to integrating and collaborating ever more closely with its global suppliers.

If you are in the automotive industry, much of what is handled revolves around 3D, especially the finish, as it is the last thing that is done in the machine and what gives the quality of the piece, so it is important to keep an eye on the finish quality the software gives.

Although technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, are already being used nowadays, in the future, these will be available to all companies.

In addition, the industry is demanding greater rendering and visualization capacity at earlier stages of the design. Thus, there will be a considerable challenge in the development of CAD and in taking advantage of artificial intelligence.

Engineering Industry

CAD powers production engineering, quality control, supply chain management, and industrial projects Through this software, a high degree of skills immersion, abilities, and challenges that the engineering industry demands is acquired.

CAD applications are used to design products and program manufacturing processes, using industrial automation according to the needs and challenges of the globalized world.

CAD has developed drawing tools in the industry to replace the traditional drawing table with something that is currently a vitally important computer tool for engineers in various branches.

The realization of drawing and design work through computers is very common nowadays in all companies that require plans, maps, buildings, electronic circuits, mechanical parts, and other aspects of delineation and design. Thus, drawing or graphic schemes are essential. In the past, these tasks were carried out by hand, but, currently, they require computer equipment and specialization programs that provide more accuracy, reliability, comfort, and a better finish result.

The present and the future of CAD

Nowadays, it would not be possible to speak of technological development or design of new products without immediately relating these to the new technologies in sustained growth. The creation of tools for Computer Aided Design (CAD) is constantly evolving and most branches of technology use it to increase the productivity of designers and to obtain increasingly complex and precise elaborations.

CAD systems allow the design of products and components through interactive graphics. A designer working on a system with a high-resolution screen generates multiple views of components and assemblies. You can also obtain three-dimensional views which can be enlarged, rotated and cut by sections, which allows customers and professionals involved in design and manufacturing to form an idea of ​​the product in question, facilitating all possible modifications and elimination of defects before the product hits the market.

Initially, CAD was introduced to provide designers with help in error testing their creations. Likewise, this was used to help engineering analysis. Although the design process continued to be carried out by hand for a long time, at certain points throughout these processes the data was entered into computer programs that analyzed and determined possible errors and then made the necessary modifications to these projects.

Over the years, CAD has been in a continuous evolution and that has led it to occupy a very important role today in the design world of various industries, which improves manufacturing and design development overall.

CAD programs are of great importance since they have become a great tool for engineers, architects and other design professionals in their respective activities. We consider it an essential part of the set of skills, as it allows working with a team to modify dimensions, geometry, materials or adaptations in order to reach the proposed objectives.

We believe it is key to have a category of awards designated for it, having created, thus, a whole new category for Best SaaS Product for Engineering Management, PLM and CAD in the SaaS Awards program this year.

The shortlisted candidates have been announced already, and are now expectant for the finalists and final winner announcement.

SaaS Awards 2022

Best SaaS Product for Engineering Management, PLM or CAD

Here you can see the full 2022 SaaS Awards shortlist.