Industrial Drawing Software - What is it and how does it help?

Industrial drawing software is a tool that allows designers to create new industrial drawings on the computer. It is also referred to as Computer Assisted Drawing or Computer-Aided Design, commonly abbreviated as CAD. Industrial drawing software helps designs be produced more quickly, with fewer errors, more uniform standards, and more searchable metadata.

What are the benefits of industrial design software?

There are many benefits to using industrial design software instead of traditional paper drafting. They include:

Easier revision

Most designs go through several revisions before they’re ready for production. With paper drawings, this could create a lot of mess, with people’s adjustments and comments piling up. Or it could lead to lots of photocopying, which creates multiple versions floating around simultaneously that can create confusion.

With industrial drawing software, you can easily load previous versions of drawings and make changes. The most recent version is easy to access and differentiate with previous versions. Collaboration is also easier because the digital drawing lives in a centralized location that everyone can access. A paper drawing requires the collaborator to be on-site to make changes, or tedious faxing back and forth.

Compatibility with Computer-integrated Manufacturing

These days, many machine shops use computer-integrated manufacturing – machines that receive instructions from computers on how to adjust output settings, guide tools like laser cutters, and apply finishes. Drawings created with industrial drawing software can be compatible with these machines, allowing for things like dimensions to be uploaded to the machine’s instructions directly.

Multiple format creation

Depending on the needs of the drawing, different formats of drawing may be more helpful. For example, an exploded view may illustrate how to assemble a product from multiple parts best. For additive manufacturing (3D printing), a 3D model of the product may be directly useful. When comparing the dimensions of two drawings, a multiple perspective drawing may be best.

Without industrial drawing software, recreating a design with these different formats is very time intensive and error prone. It becomes easy with industrial drawing software, allowing you to create a design in one format and generate other formats simultaneously.

Searchability

Industrial drawing software can produce drawings that are more easily searchable than paper drawings. Designers, procurement teams, and salespeople all need to reference previous drawings in order to produce new drawings, find the correct suppliers, and provide accurate quotes. With paper drawings, tracking down the correct information is tedious, time-consuming, and error prone. With drawings created with industrial drawing software, more searchable data is created for each drawing.

Using tools like CADDi, this searchability can be made even more powerful. Optical character recognition and AI-powered drawing parsing allows you to search for any aspect of a drawing, instead of just manually-entered metadata.

Examples of industrial drawing software

There are many industrial drawing software applications on the market. Some of them include:

AutoCAD

AutoCAD is likely the most famous industrial drawing software. It has been in development since 1981. This long history has allowed it to accumulate many features and use cases.

Blender

Blender is commonly used by animators, video game designers, and other media developers. However, it can also be used to create 3D models for manufacturing. It can be a more user-friendly option for industrial drawing software.

FreeCAD

FreeCAD, as the name suggests, is a totally free industrial drawing software. It’s also wholly open source, allowing users to extend its functionality by adding custom features and compatibility. This can help solve problems for companies with very unique requirements.

SolidWorks

SolidWorks is a long-established industrial drawing software that specializes in 3D modeling.

Using CADDi with industrial drawing software

As you implement industrial drawing software to create new drawings, you’ll produce more new data than ever before. CADDi can turn these drawings into true searchable assets. Rather than rely on just the metadata associated with the drawings, you can search deeply into the drawing's qualities themselves. CADDi also links associated data, like quality data, pricing, and order histories, with the drawing itself.

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