It used to be that entire manufacturing processes were developed around engineering drawings. Over the years, computer-aided design (CAD) systems changed all that, making enormous strides in technology and concept.

In manufacturing, 70 percent of the design and production professionals responding to Longview Advisors' newly released 2008 Collaboration & Interoperability Market Report work with CAD files in some way — whether creating, reviewing, archiving or approving designs.

From March 1 through Oct. 1, product development and manufacturing consultancy Longview Advisors conducted its fourth annual survey of 538 discrete manufacturing professionals to determine how they deal with collaboration and interoperability issues in their work environments. The questions were aimed at two target audiences, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers, across many industries worldwide.

The 76-page report offers these highlights:

• STEP format remains the most common format used for 3-D interchange, but the use of native file formats is gaining ground;

• Across all respondents, the majority of new designs reuse between 50 percent and 74 percent of existing CAD data;

• Centralized control of 3-D data is gaining ground;

• OEMs are adopting more specific CAD formats for exchange of data;

• OEMs send out CAD data in high volume;

• The majority of the CAD data being exchanged is communicating geometry and topology; feature and history tree data comprises a much smaller volume;

• Editing rights are a differentiator of technological sophistication among OEMs;

• Suppliers are still mostly using the CAD system of their own choice; and

• Suppliers are less concerned about feature/history information, and manufacturing data, than OEMs.

Another key finding in the industry best practices survey indicates that engineers are spending an average of three to 10 hours per week fixing CAD data, but only a third of them are using data translation tools. Yet 45 percent of respondents who do use third-party translation software indicate that the applications give satisfactory results better than 75 percent of the time.

"This brings up the question: with so many engineers spending so many hours in wasteful cleanup of CAD data, why are so few companies using data exchange tools, especially if the applications show effectiveness?" Longview Advisors President David Prawel said in a statement. "In this age of lean thinking, why squander valuable engineering resources by working on problems that technology is proven to address fairly well? These are the questions manufacturers should think hard about. CAD data repair would free talented people to innovate more, build better quality products customers want, and beat their competition."

According to the 2008 Collaboration & Interoperability Market Report, 60 percent of respondents said that 3-D CAD is used in product design functions 81 percent to 100 percent of the time. Meanwhile, 42 percent said that 3-D CAD is used in engineering/simulation functions 81 percent to 100 percent of the time; and 16 percent said that 3-D CAD is used in production/shop floor operations 81 percent to 100 percent of the time.

For this 81 percent to 100 percent category, the percentages are up all across the board from last year, by an average of about 7 percent. In all other categories, percentages are down marginally. "It seems there is a continued slow migration to complete reliance on 3-D CAD in product design and engineering," according to the report.

An interesting finding is that the usage of 3-D CAD in downstream applications rose from 4 percent to 6.7 percent in the 2008 results — "not a large jump, but notable," says Longview Advisors.

"Vendors have been emphasizing downstream uses for 3-D data; while the trend is encouraging, the low number who use 3-D data downstream means there is a big market ahead," the report says.

While the number of respondents indicating that up to 20 percent of CAD data on the shop floor has remained steady from last year (38 percent in 2008, 37 percent in 2007), more have indicated that 3-D CAD data is in use on the shop floor 61 percent to 80 percent of the time. Longview Advisors expects to see "the right-hand half of the curve rise across time, as 3-D CAD usage increases in production."

IndustryWeek refers to this as the "democratization" of 3-D CAD data. "It's moving out of the CAD department and into greater use throughout the organization. The important thing is to get it to the people who need it in a language they understand."

Therein lies a major challenge. Despite some headway, according to the report, CAD translation software has not increased its market penetration and customer satisfaction in the last year.

For 75 percent of Longview Advisors' respondents, the ability to share electronic documents is considered a must-have feature. Unfortunately, 71 percent of all respondents were not satisfied with CAD reviews at their companies.

Among the respondents' major complaints: geometry translation errors as well as missing data caused by CAD translation are the most common interoperability problems experienced; and suppliers are less efficient in translating and cleaning CAD data than the average OEM.

So, while 3-D CAD usage continues to grow across the organization, challenges remain and the usefulness of its data is not being optimized to its full potential, particularly in downstream functions.

The use of 3-D representations will grow for functions further downstream, "such as sales and marketing, spare parts, training and other non-production functions," Prawel tells IndustryWeek. "People working in those functional areas perform too much non-value-added work having to recreate images because they don't have access to the CAD data.

"Until they integrate these downstream processes, they're never going to be lean," Prawel says.

Earlier/Related

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Solve the CAD File Exchange Problem

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Resources

2008 Collaboration & Interoperability Market Report 2008 (free registration required)
by Longview Advisors, Inc., November 2008

Longview Advisors Survey: Only 33 Percent Use Translation Tools
MCADCafé, Nov. 11, 2008

3-D CAD Data Grows More Accessible
by Jill Jusko
IndustryWeek, December 2008/January 2009