Is Credit Crunch Hurting You?

There has been a pronounced reduction in calls for contract design in mechanical, civil and electrical.

There is still a steady demand for converting AutoCAD 2D legacy data into more modern 3D designs but there has been a remarkably steep decline in the number of calls for experienced SolidWorks designers. The requests I see are fewer and the duration of the contract shorter.

I expected the need for temporary contract designers to increase as regulars got laid off. If that's been happening, I've not yet seen it.

Is that because the 3D CAD systems have got better at importing 2D data? We use Inventor which is not bad at converting 2D to 3D & I recently saw a Solidworks demo which made it seem pretty easy to do the conversion.

With regard to the credit crunch, our company order book is better than it has ever been with enquiries at a high. We are in a bit of a niche market with a lot of sales to university & research organisations, government labs etc. around the world so perhaps it will take a while to filter down to us.

"Is that because the 3D CAD systems have got better at importing 2D data?"

I'm not sure but on the basis of my experience, I don't think so.

Before the advent of CNC driven production, someone could dimension a line that was actually 11.95" as being 12" and they got away with it knowing that a human being would build the part 12" long.

With the advent of CNC driven manufacturing, the need for precise 2D drafting jumped dramatically and that made more accurate drafting vital.

I have been doing CAD work since 1982 and while I cut my teeth on AutoCAD, VersaCAD and CADKEY, I simply do not trust the precision of designs done in that old environment. All too often, the block that showed the true length was exploded and edited to a value not consistent with what was drawn.

I recently had to model an Italian hydraulic drive unit so it could be imported into a SolidWorks assembly. It was for the high torque drive for the rakes in a copper oar separation tank. All they had was a 2D, orthographic layout.

When I copied the profile so I could revolve it about an axis, it wouldn't convert. The AutoCAD file contained many open vertices's or overlapped vertices's. I had to spend a lot of time fixing that before I could proceed with the translation.

This happens a lot. The presence of even one minor flaw like that compromises the legacy data and it's usefulness as import data. If it's in a sketch with 60 or 70 vectors, you must zoom in and inspect every vertex until you find the culprit. Automatic corrections assume too much. And after all that, it's still not parametric

In the final analysis, we have found that it's far more effective and efficient to use the old 2D files for visual information and simply model the new parts directly in the 3D environment the client selected, be it SolidWorks, Pro E or SolidEdge. The end result shows up faster, is more useful and costs the client less.

Applications Engineers will demo a 3D package and show the ease with which a perfect drawing can be imported.

What they don't tell you is that most of what is out there is less than perfect and has to be repaired first.

What's the point of investing time and money repairing old designs, drawn improperly in an antiquated paradigm that has outlived its usefulness and will be thrown out anyway?

What the economic downturn has done is to focus CEO's on these internal issues and while it may not have a bearing on their credit problems, it stands to reason that a reduction in expenses is often just as nice as an increase in sales.

L. J.

I must admit that we generally don't bother trying to import the 2D data, it's quicker to just recreate the part in 3D. I also know what you mean about 'broken' 2D drawings, I've found this when converting from our old Computervision 2D package to AutoCAD. Often lines are not joined or not quite vertical or horizontal.