CAD in the Mechanical Engineering Sector

From the Summer 2003 issue of

As usual, CAD Spaghetti looks at research findings taken from our database of CAD users. This article focuses on the Mechanical Engineering sector, and the CAD packages used within it.

We looked at a selection of 6,437 sites in our database where CAD was used for a mechanical engineering application. Within these, we have looked at the 8 most used CAD packages. The chart below shows the dominance of AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT in this sector

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This data can then be broken down to look at whether the sites are undertaking 2D, 3D, or both 2D and 3D CAD. AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT are stronger in the 2D sites, whereas Pro/Engineer, CATIA and I-DEAS are stronger in the 3D sites.

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If the basis of the analysis alters to look at the number of CAD seats in mechanical engineering, rather than the number of sites, we have a base of 33,951 seats. When looking at their usage, CADDS5 and MicroStation enter the top 8 at the expense of SolidWorks and Radan, although AutoCAD still dominates. This infers that CADDS5 and MicroStation are used in larger companies – as the number of sites using the packages is small, but the number of seats using them is high.

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As with the overall sites, there are again variations in the usage of the packages by the type of CAD carried out by the company – 2D, 3D or both. AutoCAD is strongest in 2D, CATIA, Pro/Engineer and I-DEAS are favored by those in 3D CAD, and CADDS5 by users of both 2D and 3D.

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