The power of CAD has not been fully utilized by most companies, which is associated with the skill and experience level of the CAD operators. As the average operator’s skill and experience levels increase, companies will be able to increase the benefits they receive from CAD.

Alternately, CAD software companies can improve the ease-of-use of their software to reduce the skill/experience levels required to maximize the benefits received.
a global software developer for the CAD, CAM, CAE and product life management markets, says that he has not seen any company – large or small – even come close to fully utilizing the power of a CAD system, let alone a series of integrated software systems.

Large companies put together teams of people to define “new” ways of doing things and these teams aren’t usually made up of people who have the engineering and requisite skills to define product-engineering systems.

The bigger the company, the less chance you will find engineers actually in charge of something. Small companies don’t have the technical breadth to utilize all of the capabilities that a CAD system provides, nor do they have the time to learn all of it or the resources to purchase and implement it. However, the people working in smaller companies typically have a larger breadth of understanding because they have to wear multiple hats.

Being supplied with all of the tools and gadgets in the world does not a good design engineer make; however, design engineers need to know how to use the tools before sitting down and creating a mold/part. The hardware, software and databases do not do the designs – the engineers do. A big misconception out there is that you can train people to use CAD/CAM, when in reality engineers have to be pretty proficient already – it’s the idea in the engineer’s head that gives life to the various CAD/CAM gadgets.

A CEO in the past could walk through a design studio and know what his engineers weredesigning; seeing blueprints and design sketches pinned up all over the walls, catching glimpses of models sitting out on their desks,Nowadays, everything is stored in the depths of the computer’s mainframe, which means those in the company have to know where the file is and, most importantly, know how to bring up the work. Only the engineer can access it.