Choosing CAD software

It is possible to use a wide range of different software on Windows based computers to produce Computer Aided Design (CAD) drawings. The software available ranges in price from free to shareware software (for less than $100 when you register it), to $500 and finally to software that costs as much as $30,000 a seat requiring very powerful computer workstations in order to run it. 

CAD software available on the market

There are many different CAD programs on the Australian market – AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT, Caddsman, IntelliCAD, Design Cad 3D, TurboCAD, Qikdraw, Catia, Solidworks, IronCAD, MicroStation, MiniCAD, Foresight, ListCAD, WESCOM, Adobe Illustrator to name but a few. They all have various strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps the most important thing to note is that they mostly save their drawing file in their own particular file formats, variously called .DWG, .DGN, .CTA etc. Because the file format differs, moving data from one CAD program to another is not necessarily a trivial task, so you need to 'get it right' when making the choice.

If you are running a business, it is obviously important to make the correct choice of software. This article attempts to help you make an informed judgement?

First step

The first step is to decide exactly what it is that you want to achieve with your use of CAD software. It is important to write this down along the lines set out below:

"Our company needs a simple 2D CAD drafting tool to create shop drawings. We will not need to exchange drawings with any third party". 

or

"Our company needs a 2D drafting tool to create shop drawings. We will certainly need to exchange drawings with third parties and have a real need to export drawings to a laser cutting firm". 

or

"We are determined to work in 3 dimensions, but only require wire frame models of our designs. We wish to be able to generate 2D views directly from the model."

or

"We work closely with automotive manufacturers who use the solid modelling software package called CATIA. Any product that we choose must be able to generate solid models and accept CATIA drawing files from our clients."

Can you see that there are very many possibilities? You need to write these down and communicate the information to management!

Example 1

If for example, your company was a group of professional planners who wanted to generate and present concept plans quickly and easily so that clients could interpret planning proposals, the CAD tool that they might select should be strong in generating 2D drawings and have good presentation capability. The diagram below shows part of a plan created using CAD software that we believe is appropriate for a planner. This example consists of a base map (which was scanned from a street directory) with lines and text overlaying the base map produced by the CAD program. The drawing was constructed very quickly indeed because the drafter was relying on a lot of pre-existing information which was simply scanned in and acted as a back drop.

Although not used in the example above, we find the combination of aerial photographs of a site combined with vector information a particularly useful way of conveying information to non-technical people. 

It is possible to combine photographs taken with a digital camera with drawing data as shown below.

Our mythical company might want to dress their designs up with some interesting graphics. We find Adobe Illustrator an invaluable tool for this purpose.

Our firm needs to consider the output requirements

If our hypothetical planning firm needed to produce high quality reports on (say) an ISO size A3 sheet, then CAD software tool chosen might need to be combined with with an application such as InDesign and PhotoShop to produce a result similar to that shown below.

So in this case, the company needed the right choice of CAD software and a number of software tools to satisfy their aims.

Example 2

A designer of industrial products would certainly have an entirely different set of criteria for selecting software in order to produce an image similar to that shown below.

Here the software might need to be capable of solid modelling and have built in ray-tracing facilities when rendering the image. It is likely that such software will be quite expensive. Some software of this type even requires the user to type in the dimensions of the design and when (and only when) enough dimensional information has been entered, the model is suddenly built.

Example 3 - architectural design drafting

If we were an architect and wanted to model our new company car (grin), we might model the new car using software with surface modelling capabilities, render it and superimpose the model onto a photo of the staff car park!

Wire frame image rendered and blended with a background photograph of our car park.

Summary

The choice of software is of course yours, but we cannot stress enough, the value of writing down your requirements and communicating this to management. The table below may assist in this.

Training

We are of course biased, but once you have chosen and installed your software, we believe that you need to be taught to use it correctly. Considerable increases in productivity can come if the software is utilized to its full potential. Visit our courses pages for more information. 

Flexible delivery

Many of our courses allow you to take them using our unique broadband or distance learning system - it's time and cost-efficient.