As an engineer, you’ve probably heard how CAD, computer-aided design, revolutionized the process of designing. Many engineers said goodbye to their pens, papers, and disorganized drafts and welcomed the streamlined CAD system.
CAD is the go-to design system that many engineering industries are turning to. The system gives engineers more precision in their designs, faster execution, better cost efficiency, and easier collaboration. Unlike 2D designs and blueprints, CAD's 3D design
But does CAD need to be used in every project?
We'd like to think so, but not every project needs the intricacy of CAD. To give you a better idea of engineering projects where using CAD is important, we’ve put together a list where CAD is a must.
When it comes to anything engineering, our team at Engineered Mechanical Systems (EMS) are pros. We have helped engineers with their custom fabrication, close tolerance machining, laser cutting, forming, reverse engineering, inspection, and much more. But we aren’t stopping there. Using CAD on these four engineering projects will change your perspective on designing.
Read this article to find out which engineering projects would greatly benefit from CAD.
Civil Engineering
As an engineer, you strive to create designs that make an impact and clearly outline your ideas. It's always a fear that your design might fall flat even after pouring countless hours into redesigning and iterating.
A 2D design can only take the imagination so far. You don’t want to leave your clients wanting more from your designs or struggling to imagine how your design will take form. You want them to understand what you're designing without fail.
That’s why CAD is so important for civil engineering projects. It produces more precise designs that add complexity and depth. Creating designs that will impact thousands, if not millions, of people, you want to make sure that you're producing the best design you can.
Implementing CAD in civil engineering projects is a must. CAD does much more than any physical blueprint can offer. The 3D renditions will give you more flexibility when designing and will help others understand what they are seeing.
The people examining your project, whether they're other designers, clients, or different teams, they'll need to fully grasp the concepts you’re presenting. You want to give clients a strong visualization of the design you're presenting to them. With CAD, you can do that.
Without a strong understanding of the design or the finished project, many clients won’t take the risk of spending money on a design they can’t conceptualize. Designing infrastructure, buildings, bridges, dams, roads, and much more shouldn't be designed lightly.
From private contracts to public projects, you want your clients to take the risk of investing in your design. Unlike paper designs, using CAD, you'll be able to create a design that is well put together from the beginning.
Creating a strong design that boots visualization and provides a tangible outcome will convince clients that your design is worth investing in. With the ability to add existing topography to the design and location of the project, you’ll be able to give your team or clients a design that comes to life.
Chemical Engineering
How will you design the complexity of a large process like converting chemicals, raw materials, and energy into a product? As a chemical engineer, your job isn’t easy. Drawing up designs on paper that show how chemicals can transform into the material may be doable, but is it effective?
Your designs are like putting together an intricate puzzle. Instead of looking at one project and designing the best functionality, you’re working with many different parts. Creating plans, specifications, and analyses for the plant you’re working on needs to be easily understood so that the details all fit together and aren’t lost in execution.
However, if you make one mistake in the design, all the details you’ve diligently created need to be redrafted. There’s no room for errors because every flaw in the design will need to be reworked, redone, and reiterated. With the intricacy needed from chemical engineering designs, creating designs with pen and paper isn’t ideal.
Using CAD, you can create intricate designs that show how material converts. From producing a design that optimizes the process of the project to testing how your design will create specific outcomes, CAD does it all and more.
Mistakes within the designs won’t be as drastic when you use CAD. The digitalized platform makes it easier to execute your design. Those mistakes you used to make? No need to scrap the whole design and start over. Using a digital platform like CAD, fixing those mistakes can be easy.
You can create movement with the detail, precision, and control that come with using CAD. Envisioning each step of the chemical process is easier with a 3D design. You're showing how your power plant will turn energy or chemicals into an entirely different material through your design, and with CAD you can tell the story you want.
Electrical Engineering
Designing on a small scale is difficult. When you think of electrical engineering, you may think that blueprints, pens, and papers will be enough for electrical designs. Unlike civil or chemical engineers that design large infrastructure, the design and development of electrical equipment that electrical engineers do seem vastly different.
But what if I told you that even electrical engineers benefit immensely from using CAD when drawing up their designs?
As an electrical engineer, you work on micro-level designs. Creating and testing electronic circuits, micro-fabrication, designing computer systems, and enhancing telecommunication systems isn't easy. When working with small, intricate designs you need to be sure that every detail is precise. The margin for error is small.
CAD comes equipped with a library of the smallest symbols and parts you’ll need to create your designs. Automating your designs, building default circuits, and reusing these designs in other projects is simple with CAD. In other words, using CAD as an electrical engineer will make your design process a lot faster with a library of information at your fingertips.
However, as an electrical engineer, you'll also want to test your designs. Your work goes beyond designing and developing, and luckily, so does the CAD. You can create simulations to test the temperature, voltage, and material of the design. Making sure they all work together without fault is important.
That’s why CAD is very beneficial to electrical engineers. With a focus on precision and freedom of control, you’ll be able to create designs easier, faster, and with all the information you need at your fingertips. The mechanics of CAD provides the ability to build schematics and designs based on the material, temperature, and voltage.
Mechanical Engineering
Producing prototypes for each design and iteration of a design can be expensive and time-consuming. Mechanical engineers are constantly striving to improve and modify mechanical systems, so what's the point of CAD if a large portion of the design process is creating prototypes?
With how detailed the work of mechanical engineers is, it's no surprise that they put an ample amount of time into researching, creating, prototyping, and testing designs. Improving an existing system is difficult when designs and ideas are flat and on a piece of paper.
That's why CAD is great for mechanical engineers. The hard work and ideation that goes behind modifying a mechanical system need a 3D rendition to know if the modification works or not. Making a 3D design and testing it is easy with CAD.
Since CAD comes with a component library that usually has access to the bills of material (BOM), designing and digitally prototyping is easy. You can run simulations to test anything from the measurements of vibrations to the stress of the design. Instead of creating physical prototypes and then taking the time to redesign parts that don’t work, the whole process can be done digitally.
Whether it’s improving a system that combines mechanics and electronics, iterating on the physical toll on structures, analyzing how unknown forces act on different matters, or studying how energy transforms through different systems, without a prototype, it’s hard to gauge how change takes effect. CAD makes improving and modifying mechanical components easy.
What CAD I do next?
CAD is a revolutionary system that makes designing easier, smoother, and more efficient. With all the benefits of CAD, what project wouldn’t you want to use it on?
CAD is helpful in almost any project, but especially in civil, chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering projects. Just because many industries use CAD to build big designs doesn’t mean CAD isn’t useful for small-scale designs. On the contrary, it’s necessary when designing with precision and detail.
If you want to geek out about more cool engineering and mechanical topics, subscribe to our email newsletter. You’ll get an alert anytime we publish something new. You won’t want to miss out on the other interesting topics we have in store.