Advanced CAD/CAM Technologies Assessed from a User’s Point of View. - Results of a Survey

Sophisticated CAD/CAM technologies for advanced product modeling in the sense of designing complete product variants become more and more relevant in future. Variational design techniques to support interdisciplinary design activities in different engineering domains as well as subsequent processes have to be developed. An essential task to reach this aim is to permanently investigate the current state of the art, new approaches, emerging trends, as well as industrial problems and requirements concerning the whole CAD/CAM community. In order to direct future R&D activities as close as possible to the continuously increasing requirements of a global market we carried out a comprehensive national study in cooperation with one of the Germans leading CAD/CAM magazines. In this way, it became possible to reach a representative amount of users, to receive their experience-based assessments on today’s most important aspects of CAD/CAM technology. The results of this survey are summarized in this paper to give engineers, system developers, and researchers an overview of the current situation as well as to serve as an orientation for decisionmakers in the IT-field.