The IT, software and telecom industry research specialist Business Advantage Group announced it has completed its 2014 worldwide CAD Trends Survey. The report can be downloaded here.

Chris Turner, CEO/Managing Director of Business Advantage said, “Over the years we have completed more than 500 market research, data analytics and consulting projects for many of the world’s leading CAD, CAM, PLM and CAE solution providers.  The confidential results of those projects often reveal competitive advantages or strategies and naturally very few of these have been published.  However we believe the contributions of CAD, CAM, PLM and CAE to productivity growth across many industries are vitally important and very interesting to many worldwide. For this reason we do an annual survey of worldwide CAD Trends in our own name and share the results publicly.

The survey covers 14 Trends - from ‘3D modeling’ and ‘Building Information Modeling (BIM)’ to ‘Cloud Based CAD’, from ‘Simulation’ to ‘3D Printing’, from ‘Open Source CAD’ to ‘Big Data Applications’. These and more are ranked by awareness, importance, current and intended adoption to reveal their trends and growth potential.  The many fascinating insights include:

• AEC no longer lags Manufacturing in ‘3D Modeling’ use
• 28% now use ‘Simulation’ – highest use in Germany (47%) and the USA (35%)
• ‘BIM’ will enjoy higher than average future growth – main benefits seen as design improvement (59%), savings on design time (54%) and cost (35%)
• ‘Concurrent Engineering’ is rated above average importance and above average future growth
• ‘Mobile Access to CAD’ is a growing with above average importance and usage, and has above average future growth prospects - especially in Asia Pacific
• ‘3D Printing’ - Higher usage so far in Americas (26%) than EMEA (12%) and Asia Pacific (11%)
• ‘Cloud Based CAD’ currently has low average importance and below average usage, though strong future growth intent
• ‘Big Data’ is not yet  ‘big’ in CAD - very low awareness at only 1 in 10 CAD users

In addition many key questions are answered; are annual software upgrades worth the investment, what hardware is in use now for CAD and what will be used next, to what extent are CAD models downloaded, how do customers prefer to keep up to date with industry developments etc..  As interesting as these questions are, equally intriguing are the variations in results by country/region, industry, size of company and software brands.

Business Advantage’s team of specialist researchers has undertaken B2B market research and consulting on a worldwide basis and has successfully completed over 1,000 assignments for information and communications technology clients in over 100 countries, spanning five continents.

Business Advantage: Formed in 1992, Business Advantage is a B2B market research, business development and marketing consulting practice operating in the global IT, Digital Communication and Telecommunications sectors. Their team of specialist researchers has undertaken B2B market research on a worldwide basis and has completed assignments for information and communications technology clients in over 100 countries, spanning five continents.

Business Advantage provides a wide range of services to many leading international companies, including 3M, Autodesk, Canon, Dell, HP, Infor, IBM, Intel, Lexmark, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sony, Sophos, Xerox and many others.


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